Australia 's Outback is like no other place on Earth. It is remote from Modern Australia, sparsely populated and untouched … mostly … by modern development and especially remains largely untouched by ‘us'… modern man. It thereby retains the footprints and presence, the shadow, of those ‘beings' that inhabited this vast country before we humans began to settle here. Australia's aborigines, arriving many thousands of years ago, knew and still know these beings, giving them many names … ‘Shades', ‘Min-Mins', ‘Maiama' … amongst others, recognising them as creators of the land, its rivers and mountains, its birds and insects and animals, its grasses and trees and bushes, its seasons, the sky, the stars, the Sun and the Moon; and as protective and guiding geister . They live with and revere these denizens of ‘The Dreamtime' in their everyday lives.
Venturing into the Outback, today's travellers are unlikely to meet these original inhabitants, but given special circumstances, patience and a sensitive awareness of one's surroundings, it may still be possible to sense their presence.
In this story the shadow of these denizens of The Dreamtime play a role that is as unlikely as it is possible.