In Aranda Traditions Strehlow contrasts two Central Australian peoples: one sedentary, one mobile.
The Aranda, living in a country of safe waterholes and plentiful game, were arch-conservatives whose ceremonies were unchangeable, initiations brutal, and whose penalty for sacrilege was death. They looked on themselves as a 'pure' race, and rarely thought of leaving their land.
The Western Desert People, on the other hand, were as open-minded as the Aranda were closed. They borrowed songs and dances freely, loving their land no less and yet forever on the move. 'The most striking thing about these people', Strehlow writes, 'was their ready laughter. They were a cheerful laughing people, who bore themselves as though they had never known a care in the world. Aranda men, civilised on sheep stations, used to say, "They are always laughing. They can't help it."'
in Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines
