A thousand, thousand camp fires every night, in ages gone, would twinkle to the dark from crest and valley in the rolling bush, from mulga scrub and mallee scrub, from dunes of Central sand, from gaps in straggling ranges, from gibber plains and plains of iron-wood, through leaves and in the open, from the mangroves by shore of Carpenteria, from rocks and beaches of the Bight.....for countless aeons, a thousand, thousand camp fires burned each night, and, by the fires, the Old Men told their tales which held their listeners spellbound.... Every night among the fires men chanted to the beat of stick and boomerangs and clap of hands, or drone-and-boom of didgeridoo, the songs rising and falling, trailing, quickening, while eyes gleamed bright, through smoke drift, bodies shone and dusked in fitful glow amid the shadows.......