Norman Tindale

Norman Tindale’s Aboriginal Tribes of Australia Norman B Tindale – pioneering anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist, and ethnologist – is best remembered for his work mapping the distribution of Indigenous Australian people and their languages. His lifetime project utilised data from various sources, including his own field observations in Aboriginal communities all over Australia from as early […]

Motorcycle safety Australian outback

As a rider, you have invested in your bike, it is important and responsible to yourself and for those who care about you including your family that you take any chosen outback motorcycle adventures with your safety and those of your travelling companions as the priority. It will never be a good story if you do not return or do but are permanantly disabled through just a second of lapsed concentration.

Charles Sturt and the search for the inland sea

In 1844, the explorer Captain Charles Sturt set out with a large party into the central Australia to find what he believed would be the Australia inland sea. This latest course of exploration had begun at Narrandera, onto Balranald where the party crossed the Murrumbidgee river towards the Simpson desert.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service History

May 1928, the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) was born, taking its first flight across the skies of Cloncurry, Queensland, on a life-saving mission.

Alice Springs, Australia

Alice Springs is home to a thriving hub of Aboriginal culture and art, with the town’s cultural infrastructure and renown illustrating a national profile that far outsizes the town’s relatively small size.

Aboriginal Fire Management

In Aboriginal culture, ownership provides rights to the resources of the land, as well as responsibilities for managing the land and caring for country. For tens of thousands of year, in a process tightly connected to this duty, Aboriginal cultures across Australia used fire deliberately and skilfully to manage their environment.

The Ghan Railway- a story for travellers

The legendary Ghan train is still operational today as a popular tourist attraction, widely regarded as one of the world’s great train adventures.

The South and East Alligator Rivers, Northern Territory

The Alligator Rivers area in the Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory of Australia is home to some of the richest biological diversity and most stunning landscapes in the country.

Hermannsburg, Northern Territory

Hermannsburg By Marco Stojanovik The Western Arrernte community of Hermannsburg, also known as Ntaria, is located on the remote foothills of the majestic Western MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory, 130 kilometres southwest of Alice Springs. Established as a Lutheran Aboriginal mission in 1877, the land was handed back to traditional owners in 1982 and […]

Scenic air tours of Australia

Within Australia there are a range of private plane options suitable for an aircraft charter service operation. As a tour operator working with the private aviation sector we are selecting the right aircraft for the small group tour of outback Australia offered.

Aboriginal Shell Trade

Ancient Aboriginal Shell Trade Baler and pearl shell ornaments played a key role in the history of distant trading relationships across ancient Aboriginal Australia and remain an important part of many Aboriginal cultures today. Prior…

Historical Aboriginal Marketplaces

Ancient Aboriginal Marketplaces By Marco Stojanovik Trade was a central part of life in Aboriginal Australia prior to British settlement, with trading routes criss-crossing the breadth of the continent, flowing from one nation to the next. Isabel McBryde (1987: 267) explains that lying at the intersections of various routes on mutual soil were exchange centres, which may […]

How was Pituri Traded in Ancient Aboriginal Australia?

Ancient Aboriginal Pituri Trade By the time European colonisation began in Australia 1788, Aboriginal people had been using and trading a leafy psychoactive plant substance called ‘pituri’ for thousands of years (Watson 2011). A highly…

Australian Aboriginal Paths of Migration

The Peopling of Australia Before Europeans reached Australia, there were probably already more than a million Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people inhabiting the land. Their ancestors had been there for upwards of 60,000 years.…

Aboriginal Stone Trade

Ancient Aboriginal Trade of Stone Axe and Spear Heads  Ethnographic evidence from Australia shows us that the Aboriginal tribes were interconnected with another by a complex network of exchange systems from one side of the…

Key Aboriginal Trade Routes of Ancient Australia

Key Aboriginal Trade Routes By Marco Stojanovik Trade was a central part of life in Aboriginal Australia prior to British settlement. Trading routes criss-crossed the breadth of the continent, flowing from one nation to the next, dispersing goods information, technologies, and culture. These routes were not necessarily narrow, well-defined trails, with some passing haphazardly between […]

Aboriginal Ochre Trade

Ancient Aboriginal Ochre Trade The natural clay ochre was one of the most important and valuable trading items for Australian Aboriginal people. An iron oxide pigment, it is found in a range of colours, ranging…

The Origins of Australian Stock Routes in Indigenous Traditional Pathways

Indigenous Traditional Pathways & Australian Stock Routes From the Canning Stock Route, to the Murranji, Birdsville and Strzelecki tracks, stretching across Australia is an historic network of travelling stock routes known colloquially as the ‘Long…

The Pituri Road: Ancient Aboriginal Trading Route

The ‘Pituri Road’ was one of the most important, serving as an extensive network of Aboriginal trading routes across the continent.  Pituri is made from leaves of the shrub Duboisia hopwoodii, the most potent of Australian plants containing nicotine. Widely harvested, prepared, traded and chewed by Indigenous people across much of Australia, it has been described as the ‘gold standard’ of Indigenous trading (Brady & Long, 2003). Dominant as a bartering commodity with and within tribal groups, it was considered as equivalent in status to boomerangs, spears, shields, and red ochre.

Alice Springs Telegraph Station

The opening in October 1872 of the Overland Telegraph Line signalled a new era for the Australian colonies. Previously isolated from the rest of the world by a tyranny of distance and slow and irksome communications, the colonies suddenly found themselves connected to far off places, able to communicate within mere hours. Today, the best-preserved station along the telegraph line is at Alice Springs. A restored historical reserve, it marks the original site of the first European settlement in the town and tells the story of the telegraph era and beyond.

Australian Megafauna

Australian Megafauna Harkening back to a surreal and exciting chapter of Australia‘s natural history, the era of Australia‘s megafauna sees a recurrence of the many familiar faces seen in our native wildlife today, such as the much loved fuzzy wombat, or the iconic Kangaroo. However, this ancestral wombat wasn’t quite so small and cute as […]