I can't find the particular Malcolm Douglas documentary at the moment but there's a part that stuck with me. He visits with some of the Pintupi. One of them had decided to go back into the desert to continue being a nomad. They would regularly go out and try to find him. Malcolm documents one of the trips. They find an old watering hole and millstones beside it. They would stash the millstones for making bread from grass seeds. They give up the search and take the millstones with them, which is the part that stuck with me. Packing away tools that could have been there for generations because there's no one to use them any more.
Thank you for that haunting image, of the recognition that their last user was gone, that this aspect of 65,000 years of local history had come to its end.
I hope that Payirti, the one who turned back, embraced that final solitude and understood how his family had chosen otherwise. I hope he felt his ancestors with him as he died.