Before the colonists came, we managed the land with careful use of cool burns. To stop giant bushfires, we have to learn again how to care for country.
The policy, called Revive and funded by $286 million over four years, establishes Creative Australia which will be the government’s principle arts investment and advisory body
Indigenous artists have been engraving rock shelters for millennia - long before the Kimberley’s celebrated rock art paintings. Now the rocks’ natural coatings are yielding clues to the engravings’ creation.
Jo McDonald, The University of Western Australia and Peter Veth, The University of Western Australia
They were looking to study rock art at a remote desert site but what they found showed people had been using the place almost since the first people arrived in Australia.
Humans would have first seen Kata Tjuta very shortly after arriving in Australia 50,000 years ago.
Alan Cooper
Aboriginal Australians have effectively been on their country for as long as modern human populations have been outside of Africa. We have a limit as to how long ago that was: around 50,000 years.
It’s been 50 years since the find of burnt bones in ancient soil, eroded from deep in shoreline dune in NSW.
Jim Bowler
It’s been half a century since Jim Bowler discovered Mungo Lady, which changed the course of Australian history. But now he says the find has fallen off the national radar, leaving a legacy of shame.
Sunset looking across Port Warrender to the Mitchell Plateau on the Kimberley coast. It is in Wunambal Gaambera country.
Mark Jones Films (with permission)
The first people to make it to Australia could have navigated their way by sea crossing, reaching the north-west coastline of the island continent more than 50,000 years ago.
Lake Mungo and the surrounding Willandra Lakes of NSW were established around 150,000 years ago.
from www.shutterstock.com
There is plenty of debate over what route was taken by the first people to reach Australia. New research reveals a likely route through a now submerged chain of islands.
Lida Ajer cave - a small but well decorated front entrance.
Julien Louys
The evidence of a much earlier presence of humans in Indonesia was found more than 100 years ago. But only now has the age of the fossil teeth been accurately dated.
Three main excavation squares within Boodie Cave.
Peter Veth
Sean Ulm, James Cook University; Ingrid Ward, Flinders University; Peter Veth, The University of Western Australia, and Tiina Manne, The University of Queensland
Part of the land inhabited by some of the early Australians is now submerged, but details of their life is now revealed in an excavation on an island off the continent’s north-west coast.
On expedition with Norman Tindale and local Aboriginal group at a rock shelter at Bathurst Head (Thartali) in eastern Cape York Peninsula, 1927.
Photo by Herbert Hale/South Australian Museum, Archives Norman Tindale Collection (AA 338/5/4/41)
Alan Cooper, University of Adelaide; Ray Tobler, Australian National University, and Wolfgang Haak, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology
Aboriginal people stayed settled in places across Australia for 50,000 years until Europeans arrived, showing a strong connection with the land.
What it could have looked like when humans and megafauna lived together: a giant macropod Procoptodon goliah in the foreground, while Thylacinus cynocephalus hunts for prey nearby. A herd of Zygomaturus can be see on the lake edge of the ancient Willandra system.
Illustration by Laurie Beirne
The extinction of the giant reptiles, marsupials and birds that once called Australia home has been the subject of much debate, including the role early Australians may have had on their fate.
Professor Eske Willerslev talks to Aboriginal elders in the Kalgoorlie area in southwestern Australia.
Preben Hjort, Mayday Film
New DNA research working with Indigenous Australians is answering many of the questions about when and where the First Australians emerged many thousands of years ago.
How likely is it that the Turnbull government, with its tiny majority, will make seriously hard decisions?
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Research first published in 2001 has been used to question of whether Aboriginal People were the First Australians. So why not re-test those results with improved techniques and equipment?
Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Models Theme Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Flinders University