That is how the sad, brief life of Anselm Miller, about 25 and a long-term sniffer, ended last month when he wandered away from his Mt Liebig community about 60 kilometres on the dirt desert road west of Papunya. In the desert cold, his lungs finally collapsed. He was found with his face inside the cut-off plastic bottle from which he took his last sniff of petrol. His death, like most of those who succumb to petrol sniffing, will probably be recorded as respiratory failure. The finding masks the true number of deaths caused by sniffing.
Nobody can explain why petrol sniffing is on the rise in the Western Desert.
A survey by Aboriginal health workers puts the number of full-time sniffers in the scattered Aboriginal communities west of Alice Springs at more than 250 and growing. The Papunya community, numbering about 300 people, has wrestled with outbreaks since the 1970s and has, until now, been able to stamp it out. It was to Papunya in the 1970s that Geoffrey Bardon came to teach art in the school and inspired the community to begin painting when he encouraged Aboriginal elders to paint the Honey Ant Mural on the school walls. That event gave birth to the dot-painting style of the Western Desert and sparked a artistic flowering among the desert tribes. Panpunya's great artistic legacy continues to be celebrated in the art galleries of the nation's capitals.