Aborigines

Rioters in an Aboriginal neighborhood of Sydney set fire to a train station and pelted police with gasoline bombs and bricks, injuring 40 officers in a nine-hour street battle sparked by allegations that police chased a teenager to his death. Hundreds of police doused the rioters using hoses during the fighting, which stretched into Monday morning. The hospitalized officers mostly suffered broken bones, and one was knocked unconscious by a flying brick.

It's hard to faze an Angeleno. But if you had been cruising down Olympic Boulevard in Santa Monica on a recent Friday, passing New Roads School, you might have wondered if you had driven into "Survivor II" in the outback. There, on a round patch of grass, with Los Angeles traffic whizzing by in the background, a group of Aboriginal teens stripped off their surfer glasses and jeans, painted their bodies with stripes of blue, and danced with spears to the low, haunting sound of the didgeridoo.

Some diversions invite comparison more readily than others. Take "The Sapphires," the most chipper film ever set in Vietnam. Already many have taken it, and liked it. If you enjoyed "Strictly Ballroom" or "The Commitments," which is to say if you fell for the slightly pushy charms of those show-business fables (one fantasy Australian, the other Irish, though directed by an Englishman), then chances are you'll go for this true-ish story of an Aborigine singing group entertaining the American troops, enemy fire be damned, in 1968 - like Bob Hope and Raquel Welch, New South Wales division.

Nearly every weekday, rocks sent from around the world arrive here at the headquarters of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Some are the size of gravel. One weighed in at 75 pounds. But they all have one thing in common: They were taken from a sacred mountain by travelers later weighed down by remorse. Most of these stones are pieces of Uluru, the huge red formation in the middle of the Australian Outback that is widely known as Ayers Rock.

Barramundi Moon, Australia I thought I might die in Dampier Land. It wasn't just the saltwater crocodiles lurking in the mangrove creeks. It wasn't the black tip sharks patrolling the waters of King Sound. I could keep a wary eye on the 30-foot tides, which raced in twice each day, swallowing the rocky beaches along the coastline in minutes. The ferocious mosquitoes, the ants and sand flies were mere annoyances.

The vitality of Papunya made it the focus of a fledgling Aboriginal art movement 20 years ago. Today the tiny community is a sad symbol of neglect, like the Aborigines who live there. Twisted playground equipment lies unused and rusting in an overgrown field. No one has cleaned up the glass knocked out of the lone phone booth. Hulks of broken-down cars sit on bare rims. A windmill lies where it collapsed. Garbage litters the wind-blown fields. A few skinny dogs roam the streets in the noon heat.

Flogging, spearing in the thigh and forced exile may seem like barbaric punishments, but they work for Australia's aborigines and even have the blessing of white judges. White authorities frustrated by rising crime are allowing aboriginal leaders to administer their own justice, sometimes without trial. Three months ago, tribal elders in a small town near Darwin in the Northern Territory decided car theft had gone far enough. They persuaded police to turn over six aborigines, ages 15 to 25, for a dose of traditional justice.

Horace Sutton reports in "Brash Sydney Flaunts the Good Life" (June 26) that Australian aborigines are often called "abos." True, but the term may be considered derogatory. Better to say, "aboriginal" (as an adjective or noun). Some call themselves "Koori," but immigrants may not know the name yet. J. JEFFERSON POLAND San Diego

Ominous grainy vistas fill the screen, gradually giving way to vast desert images wavering in the heat. We're somewhere in the heart of Australia, and a tall, thin young geologist (Bruce Spence) in a corrugated tin shack is excitedly preparing a crucial test blast for a mining company, which expects to tap uranium in this wasteland. Suddenly a group of aborigines seems to have materialized out of nowhere to protest the testing.