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.

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.

Australian Bushfires

The Black Summer: An Unprecedented Australian Bushfire Season Fire and fire management has historically been part of the this continents fabric. Ecosystems have adapted to fire from the regeneration of Eucalpyt forests to triggers for Leptospermum seeds to germinate after a fire event. However, Australia experienced unprecedented fires during the 2019-20 bushfire season, September to […]

The Yarra Valley, Victoria

The Yarra Valley is one of the state’s most popular tourist destinations, with its rich culinary and wine culture attracting visitors from the busy city, as well as from all over the country. For the avid wine lover, or epicurean, the Yarra Valley is definitely one of Australia’s must see destinations, with over 80 wineries in the Yarra Valley wine region.

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.

John Eyre Colonial explorer of South Australia

Edward John Eyre, one of Australia’s youngest and most fearless explorers, is immortalized in the names of the South Australian landscape, most notably Lake Eyre and the Eyre Peninsula.

Port Fairy, Victoria

Port Fairy By Marco Stojanovik Port Fairy is a charming, well-preserved, 19th century seaside town in western Victoria, the middle of three harbours along the coast between Portland and Warrnambool. It boasts wide, cobbled streets lined with magnificently restored heritage cottages, museums, and old stone churches, situated on a stretch of spectacular coastline filled with […]

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.

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 […]

Beechworth, Victoria

Beechworth By Marco Stojanovik Historic Beechworth, situated in north east Victoria between Wangaratta and Wodonga, is one of Australia’s best-preserved towns from the gold rush era. Having avoided modernisation of much of its built environment, it is home to 32 elegant National Trust-listed buildings, most of which were constructed in the 1860s. They sit along […]

Iconic Animals of the Australian Outback

Iconic Animals of the Australian Outback When it comes to Australia‘s iconic wildlife, the more well known faces of the Kangaroo, Emu, or Koala generally spring to mind. But for many Australians, or visitors from abroad, it can be easy to forget the incredible diversity of wildlife that inhabits this enormous continent, ranging from the […]

Budj Bim Eel Traps, Victoria

Budj Bim Eel Traps Over thousands of years the Gunditjmara people of southwestern Victoria, Australia, used volcanic rock created by the Budj Bim lava flow to construct a sophisticated stone aquaculture complex of fish traps, weirs, dams, and channels. Drawing upon deep knowledge of water cycles and migration routes, they created and manipulated landscape over […]

Aboriginal Songlines

Songlines trace the journeys of ancestral spirits who created the land and all natural phenomena. The creation stories as well as practical knowledge needed for survival.