In Never Never Lands Unknown Fields chronicle the creation stories of
the city and head off on a dust-blown road trip across Australia, into
the vast and mysterious interior of this remote island continent in
search of its ancient tribal hinterlands and its immense
techno-landscapes. Here, in the Never Never, are the resource
territories of the city, a land of rich geology, endless horizons and
mining pits so large that they generate their own weather systems. For
this book, Unknown Fields travel 1km beneath the surface of the earth to
find gold and to survey and laser-scan the technological incisions that
release it from the ground. These massive excavations are cut through
the narrative landscape of the Dreamtime, the creation mythology of the
Aboriginal Australians. Stories from two indigenous authors act as our
Dreamtime guide as we drift across the grounds of traditional creation,
before diving deep to follow a new subterranean songline, one created
from underground mine computer models and laser survey data. Roughly
0.034 grams of this landscape is locked away in each of our mobile
phones, charged and quietly vibrating. We all carry a little piece of
Australia in our pockets.