In the outback, a campaign against gasoline-sniffing

That doesn't mean sniffing has been vanquished wholly.

In the aftermath of a murder in the community in March, a half-dozen local kids turned to sniffing. And when flooding has cut off the road to Mount Theo in recent years, new outbreaks of sniffing have occurred as well.

But the solution has become so ingrained that any new outbreaks are tackled quickly. "If someone has sniffed petrol in Yuendumu, we know about it within 24 hours," says Stojanovski. "And within 48 hours of them sniffing, usually, they are out at Mount Theo."

Just how different that is from the norm in central Australia's remote indigenous communities says a lot about the deep roots of a problem that has plagued young Aborigines for decades. Government inaction is partly to blame, Ms. Brady argues. Federal and state rehabilitation and diversion programs have come and gone too quickly to offer any long-term solution.

There have been practical missteps, as well. In the Northern Territory, where many of the remotest desert communities fall, for example, it is illegal to sell petrol to sniffers, but not to sniff. That means police are sometimes powerless to stop even the most brazen sniffers. Where sniffing is illegal, as in neighboring South Australia, other issues are raised due to the difficulties of policing small communities 100 miles apart.

In Mutitjulu, the Aboriginal settlement in the shadow of Uluru, the red monolith once known as Ayers Rock that rises from the plains of central Australia, community leaders are now trying to replicate Mount Theo to tackle an outbreak of sniffing. Already, more than $100,000 in profits from the community store has been set aside for an outstation more than 100 miles to the southwest.

But according to Anne Mosey, a health consultant who has long worked on the issue of sniffing, replicating Mount Theo won't be easy. "It's not just about setting up an outstation," she says. Yuendumu, according to Mosey, is unique because it overcame not only government neglect, but a number of barriers thrown up by Aboriginal culture as well.

Typically, traditional culture gives children a high level of autonomy, for example, and in communities where sniffing is rife, health workers often encounter tradition-bound parents reluctant to tell their kids what to do.

Poverty, welfare-dependency, and the issues that come with those are still a persisting burden, however. Visiting Yuendumu can be a confronting experience. Dust is ever-present and it sometimes seems as if there are as many abandoned buildings as inhabited ones. Those homes that are lived in are often crowded and disheveled, their yards home to cars torn apart for spares. Packs of dogs howl through the night.

But Mount Theo's success has helped the community address some underlying issues. An ancillary program called "Strong Voices" is meant to get Yuendumu's young people discussing what once seemed a rare concept – their hopes and aspirations. "It's better now," says Georgina Nampinjimpa Scott, a 20-year-old student Aboriginal health worker. "There's a lot of things going on."

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