Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
First Arrivals
People first arrived on the northern shores of Australia at least 40,000 years ago. As they
began building shelters, cooking food and telling each other tales, they left behind signs of
their activities. They left layers of carbon - the residue of their ancient fires - deep in the
soil. Piles of shells and fish bones mark the places where these people hunted and ate. And
on rock walls across WA they left paintings and etchings, some thousands of years old,
which tell their stories of the Dreaming, that spiritual dimension where the earth and its
people were created, and the law was laid down.
Contrary to popular belief, these Aboriginal people, especially those living in the north,
were not entirely isolated from the rest of the world. Until 6000 years ago, they were able
to travel and trade across a bridge of land that connected Australia to New Guinea. Even
after white occupation, Aboriginal people of the northern coasts regularly hosted Macassan
fishermen from Sulawesi, with whom they traded and socialised.
When European sailors first stumbled on the coast of 'Terra Australis', the entire contin-
ent was occupied by hundreds of Aboriginal groups, living in their own territories and
maintaining their own distinctive languages and traditions. The fertile Swan Valley around
Perth, for example, is the customary homeland of about a dozen groups of Noongar people,
each speaking a distinctive dialect.
The prehistory of Australia is filled with tantalising mysteries. In the Kimberley, scholars
and amateur sleuths are fascinated by the so-called Bradshaw paintings. These enigmatic
and mystical stick figures are thousands of years old. Because they look nothing like the
artwork of any other Aboriginal group, the identity of the culture that created them is the
subject of fierce debate.
Meanwhile there are historians who claim the Aboriginal people's first contact with the
wider world occurred when a Chinese admiral, Zheng He, visited Australia in the 15th cen-
tury. Others say that Portuguese navigators mapped the continent in the 16th century.
The founding of Perth is most famously depicted in George Pitt Morison's painting
The Foundation of Perth
(1829). It is often erroneously credited as an authentic record of the ceremony rather than a historical re-
construction.
