For decades the outback of the Great Southern Land has been torn asunder by the violent magical tempests, the dread Mana Storms.  The Bush had become a more dangerous and terrifying place than ever before, as the astral turmoil spilled over into the material realm, tearing across the landscape and warping the land around its turbulent paths.  The proud city of Sydney was entirely isolated by its own magical wall of storm.  Travel between cities was fraught with the most mercurial dangers, when it was possible.  Mining outposts, sheep stations, cattle farms were all brought low as the centre of Australia became once again unfamiliar and unknowable while the Mana Storms raged.

Until they stopped.

Suddenly, one night, the Storms ceased.  The magicians claimed they felt it first, but it wasn't until full, uninterrupted contact was established between the mines at the Isa and their corporate masters on the Coasts that it was acknowledged the outback had gone silent.

And although there were celebrations - great, wild celebrations - people who understood the consequences began to worry.  Yes, Sydney had been liberated, and travel between the Coasts and the centre was now possible.  But some people wondered why the Storms had vanished, and even more began to wonder why Astral Space outside the East Coast and West Coast Sprawls was so... dead...

In the temporal sphere, of course, there was much hurried movement.  Corps that had been unable to assert their dominance over vital natural resources locked in the red heart of the country began to jostle for control over these, sometimes literal, goldmines.  New facilities and NeoStations were built, carte blanche given by a struggling government that needed the new wealth rediscovered operations could bring.  The dispossessed of the sprawls found somewhere new they could go, taking their suped-up jigsaw vehicles into the wide red yonder - much to the annoyance of the corps and the fear of the locals.

Without the omnipresent threat of the Storms, a significant proportion of the population were finally heard, though their message was not welcome to all.  Since the Storms had started, quite a few sought to blame the indigenous tribes, who had taken to the Awakening swiftly, for the calamities.  Now the Storms have gone, those same few sought to blame them for their absence - since Astral Space is at death's door beyond the cities - and to bring them to book for summoning the Storms in the first place.

A weak government cracked and forced large populations of indigenous Australians into crowded reservations, citing temporary relocation until the belligerent mobs could be quelled.  Scores of aboriginals, often aided by less prejudiced and frightened individuals, hid in the slum areas of the Sprawls where they were mostly ignored, or fled out into supposed quiet paradises in the outback promised by tribal elders.

The original caretakers of the land have been supplanted and denied again.  Those who seek to govern the land find they have not the ability to do so.  Those who live on the land live in fear of those don't wish them to.  The mighty corporations who claim the riches of the land are once again turning on each other for the bounty that lies beneath it.  And amongst this all are those who walk the shadows of the land, living on the fringes and owing fealty to no one, owning only themselves.

In a place where one set of storms has ceased, only to fuel the threat of more yet to come, who owns the land?

TERRA NULLIUS
A Shadowrun 4e Campaign