Campaigners on a wave to lift support Jimmy Wavehill with the Recognise surfboard. Photo: Glenn Campbell There are no waves at Wave Hill, 800 kilometres south of Darwin, on the edge of the Tanami Desert. Far from the ocean, it seemed a strange place to bring a surfboard. But that is what campaigners for the recognition of indigenous Australians in the nation's founding document did this week when they rolled into the community of Kalkarindji. The campaigners are travelling the country to raise awareness of their push and asking people to sign the surfboard as a sign of respect. Starting in Melbourne in May, they walked to Adelaide, then drove, cycled and paddled up the guts of the nation, reaching the Garma Festival in north-east Arnhem Land in August. The campaigners restarted their journey in Darwin last week, heading west. The challenge, like the distance, is great, made all the more daunting by Australia's history of failed referendums. All major political parties support recognition, but public awareness is low, just 42 per cent, according to an August poll. The movement has more than 110,000 Facebook likes, but social media doesn't seem big in Kalkarindji. "You can do all your work on Facebook and Twitter, but you ... need to talk face to face to Australians," says Lachlan McDaniel, a Wiradjuri man who is Recognise's public awareness project officer. He says the journey is a show of commitment, that the movement will travel to the nation's loneliest and most distant corners to make the case for constitutional change. The stop in Kalkarindji is special, because it was here that an earlier chapter in the indigenous struggle for equality unfolded. In 1966, Gurindji stockman Vincent Lingiari led about 200 Aboriginal stockmen, house servants and their families on a walkoff from Wave Hill cattle station as a protest against low wages and appalling living conditions. What began as a strike for equal pay and conditions developed into a demand for the return of traditional lands. The struggle culminated in the 1975 visit by Gough Whitlam in which he poured sand into Lingiari's palm to symbolise the handing back of more than 3000 square kilometres of land. "We are mates now," Lingiari said. The campaigners explain their goal to senior community members. Jimmy Wavehill, one of the stockmen in the walkoff, says he's glad the visitors have come to talk to the community, and thinks constitutional recognition is a good idea. If white people and black people can work together, it's good for our future.