‘Ten footies, one small saltie’: The Northern Territory experience and the shadow pandemic

At the start of the pandemic, I was returning home from presenting my research on violence against women in the Northern Territory at an international conference in Edinburgh (Brown, 2020a). I was travelling with my mother – a visually impaired and deaf woman who is a survivor of domestic violence. We made it back to Australia a day before the borders closed but my mother had become sick on the plane. We landed at Sydney International Airport and immediately reported to health officials, who advised us to get on the next plane to our home, a remote town in the very centre of Australia called Alice Springs. There she could isolate in her home. Several Aboriginal community–controlled organisations in Alice Springs had successfully lobbied the Northern Territory government to close the Northern Territory’s borders. Once more, my mother and I had to race home.