The Bear specialises in dropping into remote places and finding his way back to civilisation. Each episode usually features him going hunting with a couple of local natives (none of whom are never wearing sneakers or driving troopies). He exaggerates “the Wild” to the point that it becomes a-historical, untouched by impurities of modernity. And to my mind that’s exactly what Rothwell does with desert art.

I love desert art not because of its capacity to hold onto some impossible past as people inevitably pass away, but because of the possibilities it offers for understanding the complex modernity of the western desert with all its apparent contradictions: dynamic and traditional, difficult yet optimistic, transient and still enduring.

Rothwell’s approach condems all younger Aboriginal people to a place where they can never be traditional enough, and for that reason his “first contact/last contact” approach is both disrespectful and dangerous.