The marginality of Australian settlement prompted Bruce Chatwin to consider how it might have been otherwise if a different people had colonised the continent. In Songlines, he presents Alice Springs through the eyes of Arkady Volchak, son of a refugee Cossack. Chatwin and Volchak—‘a Pom and a Com’— develop a common antipathy to the local … Continue reading The invisible city of Kitezh down under