[5] Looking to continue research on The Songlines, Chatwin was able to secure a permit to stay in the Aboriginal Village of Kintore for a period for two weeks, starting on March 18th, although upon arriving found it difficult to speak with the local residents due to barriers in language and his outsider status.

[6] Preliminary work on the rail line from Alice Springs to Darwin was being planned by the federal government as early as 1981 and had been a major topic of debate in Australian politics during that time, although by mid 1983 the project had been officially cancelled (it eventually was completed in 2004).

[7] [8] Friends and observers later surmised that the "fiction" label was largely a means to avoid questions about the veracity of various quotes and ideas presented in the work, especially around a topic as sensitive as Aboriginal mythology.

Chatwin combines evidence from Aboriginal culture with modern ideas on human evolution, and argues that on the African Savannah, we were a migratory species hunted by a dominant feline predator.

[11] John Bayley, in a review for the London Review of Books, called the book "compulsively memorable", but observed the difficulty encountered by the anthropologist in his representation of a culture such as the Aboriginal one Chatwin dealt with: "describing [their] life and beliefs... falsifies them [and] creates a picture of unreality... seductively comprehensible to others"; Chatwin "makes no comparison or comment, and draws no conclusions, but his reader has the impression that anthropologists can't do other than mislead."

[12] In The Irish Times, Julie Parsons, after consideration of the difficulties encountered by Chatwin—"born, raised and educated in the European tradition"—in apprehending the nature of the relationship between the Aborigines and the land on which they live, notes that as the reader follows his narrative, they "realise the impossibility of Chatwin's project.

Despite Stewart's conclusion that "today... [his] fictions seem more transparent" and that Chatwin's "personality... learning... myths, even his prose, are less hypnotizing", he considers that "he remains a great writer, of deep and enduring importance."