Decades of expansion for Whyalla were followed by decades of contraction. Whyalla has seen optimism and idealism but also, if not despair, then its close neighbours, alienation and apathy.
History is writ large in the remote areas around Woomera and the Nullarbor: from the fossils of microscopic, cell-like creatures to ancient stone tools to the deitrus of rocket tests and the painful legacy of the Maralinga atomic blasts.
Since his ascendancy, the currently trim and muscular-looking Malcolm Turnbull has – for an Australian prime minister – had unusually little to say about sport.
Until we see a marked change in the stories that are told, together with a shift from inclusion to social justice, the national story of Australian sport will remain very, very white.
Public policy no longer requires the imprimatur of the Aboriginal people; Aboriginal participation in the decisions taken about their lives is negligible.
Australia has continually faced a returned soldier crisis. This is something that marked men returning from all the wars of modern memory – from the Great War to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Research Fellow, Institute for Health & Sport, member of the Community, Identity and Displacement Research Network, and Co-convenor of the Olympic Research Network, Victoria University