1 January 1788
There are varying estimates for how long Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived in Australia. The most recent archaeological evidence suggests that Aboriginal people have occupied mainland Australia for at least 65,000 years, making theirs the oldest continuing cultures on Earth.
It is thought that the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people came to Australia from Asia. This was possibly on foot before rising sea levels engulfed the land bridge between Australia and Asia. However, some at least came by boat, navigating from island to island to the mainland. These people were the true discoverers of Australia, and Australia’s first mariners.
The First Australians employed ingenious methods to maximise the utility of the resources of the land. This included Australia’s coastlines and inland waterways. The Gunditjmara people of western Victoria, for example, developed sophisticated systems including
- weirs,
- dams,
- and eel-traps.
They were built in Lake Condah and the surrounding waterways over 6,000 years ago. It is just one example of many similar ancient aquaculture systems around the country. Around Australia, coastal shell middens stand testament to generations of Aboriginal people harvesting and eating shellfish in the same location.
The earliest European explorers noted that mainland Aboriginal people used canoes. One example is the nawi tied-bark canoe used by Indigenous communities on the New South Wales central coast. Another example are sophisticated outrigger canoes used by the seafaring peoples of the Torres Strait. Both communities used them respectively to visit nearby islands.
From at least the middle of the seventeenth century, regions of northern Australia were engaged in trade. One noteworthy group were seafarers from Makassar, on the island of Sulawesi in modern-day eastern Indonesia. Muslim sojourners from Makassar traded with the Yolngu people of Arnhem Land. They brought such goods as:
- cloth,
- tobacco,
- rice,
- knives,
- and kiln-fired porcelain.
Trades were done in exchange for the right to fish for trepang (sea cucumber or beche de mer) in the coastal waters. Traders dried and packed the trepang for markets in southern China, where it was valued for both its culinary and medicinal purposes.
For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, both land and sea are inextricably Country. In July 2008, the full bench of the High Court found that the traditional owners of Blue Mud Bay in the Northern Territory had exclusive rights to the tidal waters of their land. The Court’s decision, a determination of “sea rights”, is only the most recent development in the law and lore of Indigenous peoples’ maritime endeavour. it is a history that dates back to time immemorial.