HUDDLED around a campfire in a community deemed unworthy of inclusion on Australia's official maps, Aboriginal elder Dick Brown reflects on a vote that ended the practice of counting his people among Australia's flora and fauna.

"We thought that it would change for the better,'' Brown says without rancour when asked about the 40th anniversary of a landmark vote that recognised Aborigines as full Australian citizens for the first time.

He is speaking from one of the impoverished ghettos surrounding Alice Springs where most of the town's Aboriginal population lives.