2019

1. 14 July

   The Queensland government launches the “Tracks to Treaty” commitment, aimed to give Aboriginal communities greater self-determination and better delivery of services, lift the representation of Aboriginal voices to government, and begin work on negotiating one or more treaties to create a positive shared future.

   [Tracks to Treaty is about] understanding our past, our shared history… but also telling the truth in all of that, and ensuring that truth then lays the path for the future generations. — Leeanne Enoch, Environment Minister and Quandamooka woman ^[1]

2. 26 October

   The Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park board closes the Uluru climb after a unanious decision made in 2017.

2020

1. January

   Opera Australia revives the musical Bran Nue Dae, 30 years after the original debuted in 1990. The musical achieved popular and critical acclaim for giving Aboriginal voices centre stage, tackling tough issues with humour and challenging mainstream perceptions of Aboriginal people. It tours Sydney in January, Perth (February), Brisbane (July) and Adelaide (August) among other locations. Aboriginal director Rachel Perkins made it into a movie in 2009.

2. 29 April

   250th anniversary of Captain James Cook claiming possession of Australia for the British Crown.

10,000

1. Present day Australian climate establishes.

2. Aboriginal people at Wyrie Swamp near Millicent, 340 kms south-east of Adelaide, South Australia, use returning boomerangs to hunt waterfowl.

120,000

1. Analysis of pollen and charcoal giving a date of 120,000 BP suggests that people were using fire to clear land in the Lake George basin in the Southern Tablelands of NSW, about 30 kms north-east of Canberra. ^[2] Experts also found signs of human disturbance in rainforest pollen patterns in a drill core from the edge of the continental shelf, 80 kilometres east of Cairns.

   Similarly, research presented to the Royal Society of Victoria in 2019 by a group of academics found that blackened stones at Moyjil (Point Ritchie, Victoria), were between 100,000 and 130,000 years old. While cautious, the authors concluded that human habitation was the most likely explanation for "marine shells, stones in unexplained depositional context and fire resemblance to hearth". ^[3]

13,000

1. Land bridges between mainland Australia and Tasmania are flooded. Tasmanian Aboriginal people become isolated for the next 12,000 - 13,000 years.

2. At Kow Swamp near Cohuna, 230 kms north of Melbourne, Victoria, Aboriginal people weare kangaroo teeth headbands similar to those worn by men and women in the Central Desert in the 19th century.

16,000

1. Hearths, stone and bone tools, Shaws Creek near Yarramundi (60 kms north-west from Sydney), NSW.

2. Sea levels begin to rise as ice caps melt. Inland lakes such as Lake Mungo have dried up.

18,000

1. Art at Ubirr in Kakadu National Park (Northern Territory, 300 kms east of Darwin) depicts now extinct animals, the Thylacine (Tasmanian tiger), and Zaglossus (the long-beaked echidna).

2. Harvesting grass seeds is integral to Aboriginal socio-economic life on the large grasslands. The seeds were ground and baked or roasted and eaten whole.

20,000

1. Aboriginal people were dispersed across the entire continent, occupying places as remote as rock shelters on the Franklin River in south-west Tasmania and at Birrigai in the ranges of the Australian Capital Territory, which surrounds Canberra, the national capital.

2. Some 10% of Tasmania is covered by glacial ice. Kutikina Cave on the Franklin River is occupied by Tasmanian Aboriginal people at the height of the last ice age.

22,000

1. In deep caves under the Nullarbor Plains at Koonalda (at the western edge of South Australia, about 50 kms from the ocean), Aboriginal people mine flint and leave grooved designs on the cave walls. This is early evidence of the close relationship of art and work in Aboriginal life.

2. Aboriginal people living at Malangangarr in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, use ground-edge grooved axes. Australian technology leads the world.

3. Age of a rock-shelter on the Kings Tableland near Wentworth Falls, NSW.

   

26,000

1. Age of bones found in sediment at the Willandra Lakes Region of far western NSW.

2. The body of a woman from Lake Mungo provides the earliest evidence in the world of ritual cremation. The body is prepared with ochre before cremation.

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References