Lake Surprise fills a volcano crater at Budj Bim National Park in southeastern Australia.
Credit: Peter (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Australia is famous for its unique culture, metropolitan cities, and unusual wildlife, among other things. Each week, this seasonal feature will spotlight one of Australia’s many wonders.

The inactive volcano and cultural site Budj Bim made history when, in 2019, it became the first World Heritage site listed exclusively for its value to Aboriginal culture. Such sites are places of unique cultural or natural importance as designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Budj Bim, once known as Mount Eccles, is located in southeastern Australia. The overlapping craters of Budj Bim hold lakes in which Aboriginal people maintained systems of aquaculture (the raising of water animals and plants) for thousands of years. Budj Bim means High Head in the language of the Gunditjmara people (also called the Dhauwurd Wurrung) of southwestern Victoria state. Budj Bim sits about 170 miles (270 kilometers) west of Melbourne. It is part of the 20,700-acre (8,370-hectare) Budj Bim National Park (formerly Mount Eccles National Park).

Gunditjmara tradition holds that Budj Bim is part of the body of an ancient creator being, who was revealed to Aboriginal people in an eruption around 30,000 years ago. The last known eruption of Budj Bim occurred about 8,000 years ago. Starting at least 6,600 years ago, the Gunditjmara people began creating a system of channels and dams to trap eels and other fish among the rock formations of Budj Bim. The result was an aquaculture system that provided plentiful food, and permanent Aboriginal settlements were established at nearby Lake Condah and Lake Gorrie. European settlers arrived in the area in the 1830’s.

Budj Bim—named Mount Eccles by European settlers—became a protected area in 1926 and a national park in 1960. Mount Eccles National Park was renamed Budj Bim National Park in 2017. The area is popular for camping, hiking, and picnicking.

Vincent Namatjira’s 2020 Archibald Prize winning painting shows Namatjira (right) standing next to former Australian rules football legend Adam Goodes.
Credit: Stand strong for who you are (2020), acrylic on linen by Vincent Namatjira (photo by Mim Stirling/Art Gallery of New South Wales)

The Australian artist Vincent Namatjira has been awarded the prestigious Archibald Prize for his painting Stand strong for who you are. Namatjira is the first Aboriginal artist to win the Archibald Prize in its 99-year history.

The Archibald Prize is an Australian art prize awarded each year for portrait painting and is judged by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Jules François (J. F.) Archibald, an Australian newspaper editor who died in 1919, provided the money for the award in his will. The Archibald Prize was first awarded in 1921 and is given for a portrait “preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in art, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia”. In establishing the prize, J. F. Archibald’s aim was to foster portraiture as well as support artists and perpetuate the memory of great Australians.

An Archibald Prize finalist for four consecutive years, Namatjira is the first Aboriginal artist to win the prize. On hearing the news Namatjira said, “I’m so proud to be the winner of the Archibald Prize, and to be the first Aboriginal artist to win is really special. I feel like this is a very important moment in Australian art. It’s an honor to be the first, but I also want to acknowledge all of the Indigenous finalists and Indigenous sitters [portrait subjects] for the Archibald this year and in past years.”

Namatjira’s winning painting, Stand strong for who you are, is a portrait of the former Australian Rules footballer and community leader Adam Goodes. In the portrait, Namatjira has painted himself alongside Goodes, whom he describes as “a proud Aboriginal man who stands strong for his people”.

Namatjira was born in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia in 1983. He now lives in the community of Indulkana in the APY (Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara) Lands in South Australia and works at Iwantja Arts, an Aboriginal Art Center. Namatjira began painting in 2012. Initially he created traditional dot paintings but soon turned to portraits. Namatjira is the great-grandson of the renowned artist Albert Namatjira, considered one of the most important Aboriginal painters in Australian art.

Vincent Namatjira said of his award-winning piece, “The title of my painting is stand strong for who you are. So what I recommend for my children and also for all the children in Australia, Indigenous children, just keep on doing what you do every day – just keep going for your goals and one day you’ll reach your goal.”

August 4, 2017

New excavations conducted at Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in northern Australia, have provided evidence that humans first arrived there around 65,000 years ago. That date, based on sophisticated modern dating methods, pushes back the earliest physical evidence for human occupation in Australia by at least 15,000 years. The discovery is forcing scientists to reevaluate some common theories about the ancestors of today’s Aboriginal people of Australia.

The Madjedbebe rock shelter is the oldest-known site of human occupation in Australia. Credit: © Dominic O’Brien, Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation

The chronology of the peopling of Australia has been the subject of scientific debate for decades. Archaeologists have found prehistoric Aboriginal sites mainly in southern Australia. These sites—which date from 30,000 to 40,000 years ago—include locations at the Swan River in Western Australia and at Lake Mungo, Lake Tandou, and Talyawalka Creek in New South Wales. After Aboriginal people arrived in northern Australia, it could have taken them several thousand years to travel across the continent and learn to live in new environments. Scientists have therefore concluded that human beings must have arrived in northern Australia well before 40,000 years ago, the dates of the earliest Aboriginal sites in the south. Most archaeologists believed people first arrived in northern Australia in a single migration that occurred at least 50,000 years ago.

Researcher Elspeth Hayes, left, discusses the sampling of stone tool residue with Mark Djandjomerr, center, and May Nango, right, of the Mirarr Clan, the traditional owners of Madjedbebe. Credit: © Vincent Lamberti, Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation

Madjedbebe, a prehistoric rock shelter about 180 miles (300 kilometers) east of Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory, was first investigated by archaeologists in the 1970’s. The scientists discovered hundreds of stone tools at the site and many pieces of red ocher, a soft mineral often used as a pigment (coloring agent). Determining the age of the site, however, proved difficult. Beginning in 2012, archaeologists obtained permission from local Aboriginals to reenter Madjedbebe. The archaeologists then recovered more stone tools and huge amounts of red ocher. The tools included advanced ground-edge stone axes, grindstones for processing seeds, finely made stone spearpoints, and flakes of shiny mica that may have been added to ocher like glitter.

This ancient ground-edge stone axe was recently recovered from Madjedbebe. Credit: © Chris Clarkson, Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation

The scientists at Madjedbebe used a state-of-the-art dating technique called optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) to date the stone tool-bearing sediments. This method determines how long sediments have been buried based on the amount of electrons given off by radioactive elements that become trapped in sediment crystals. The new tests determined the sediments were between 60,000 to 70,000 years old.

Although many archaeologists were excited about the new ancient dates for this site, other scientists raised questions that had not been considered before. In an earlier study, scientists analyzing genetic material from living Aboriginal people suggested that the first humans arrived about 50,000 years ago. The genetic data suggest that the people who inhabited Madjedbebe may have been part of an early migration that was overwhelmed by later arrivals. These later migrants, they argue, are the ancestors to today’s Aboriginal people of Australia, and the earlier arrivals may have died out.

April 13, 2017

For thousands of years, indigenous (native) people of Western Australia knew about giant ancient footprints along the shore of the Indian Ocean. But only recently have scientists learned about, and been able to study, the tracks, which were made by dinosaurs some 100 million years ago. A team of scientists led by Steven W. Salisbury of the University of Queensland studied the collection of fossilized footprints—which includes the largest ever discovered—for five years. Salisbury and his team recently published their findings as a memoir in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Richard Hunter, an elder of the Goolarabooloo community, lies alongside a massive sauropod track in the Walmadany area of Dampier Peninsula in Western Australia. Credit: © Steve Salisbury, University of Queensland

A fossil is the mark or remains of an organism that lived thousands or millions of years ago. Most people think of bones or shells when they hear the word fossil. But tracks, trails, and burrows left by ancient organisms are also extremely important in paleontology (the study of prehistoric life). These marks, called trace fossils, give paleontologists a rare glimpse into the lives of prehistoric animals. The scientists can use trace fossils to answer many questions about an animal’s behavior, such as how it moved or how many animals moved together at a time. Scientists cannot usually pair a trace fossil to an exact species (kind) of animal, but they can often determine broadly what type of animal left the mark.

The fossilized tracks in question are on the northern shores of Western Australia. About 130 million years ago, the region was a sandy floodplain covered with braided rivers. Braided rivers have numerous channels separated by small temporary islands. After the tracks were made, floods rapidly covered them in sediment, preserving them from destruction. Thousands of tracks are scattered over several dozen sites in the area, and about 150 are in excellent condition. The findings give scientists a valuable snapshot into life during the early Cretaceous Period in Australia.

Salisbury and his team identified several types of prints coming from ornithopods (plant-eating dinosaurs that could walk on two or four legs), sauropods (large plant-eating dinosaurs with long necks and tails), stegosaurs (relatives of Stegasaurus), and theropods (meat-eating dinosaurs) of different sizes. One of the tracks measures a whopping 5 ½ feet (1.7 meters) long. This print was made by the hind foot of a huge sauropod some 18 feet (5.5 meters) tall at the hip.

The indigenous people of the Western Australia coast had known of the tracks for thousands of years and had incorporated them into their belief system. In one story, the Dreamtime figure Marala, also known as the Emu Man, makes the three-toed footprints that today are believed to have been made by theropods. (The emu is an Australian bird that has three toes on each foot.) The Dreamtime is a fundamental spiritual concept that connects traditional beliefs and practices among the Aboriginal people of Australia.

In 2008, the state government of Western Australia—unaware of the ancient tracks—proposed that a natural gas processing facility be located near the site. Fearing that the tracks would be damaged or destroyed, the Aboriginal people contacted Salisbury to assess the tracks’ scientific importance. As word spread of the natural gas plant and the damage it could cause to the tracks, environmental groups, paleontologists, and local citizens campaigned for the area to be preserved. The company planning to build the processing plant eventually withdrew its application. Now the tracks, with their important connections to prehistory and the Dreamtime will remain protected.

November 16, 2016

A brief call of nature recently led an Aboriginal man to discover a site preserving some of the oldest known evidence of human settlement in Australia. Clifford Coulthard, an Adnyamathanha elder, stumbled across a rock shelter during a brief bathroom break while surveying in the northern Flinders Range with archaeologist Giles Hamm of La Trobe University in Melbourne. The Adnyamathanha are the Aboriginal people of Australia native to the Flinders Range of South Australia. Subsequent excavations at the rock shelter, called Warratyi, unearthed ancient tools, bones, and other artifacts that are dated to about 49,000 years ago–only about 1,000 years after the first humans arrived in Australia.

The Warratyi rock shelter lies in the desert landscape of South Australia’s Flinders Range. Credit: © Giles Hamm, La Trobe University

Warratyi sits above a desert landscape crossed with deep gorges about 340 miles (550 kilometers) north of Adelaide. In prehistoric times, the rock shelter offered protection from the wind, heat, and cold, as well as a commanding view of the once-stream-filled landscape below. Archaeologists excavated some 4,300 stone artifacts and hundreds of animal bones, emu egg shells, and other materials from layers deep within the site. They estimate that people occupied Warratyi on and off for about 40,000 years, finally abandoning the site about 10,000 years ago when conditions became impossibly dry.

One sharpened bone tool from Warratyi, called a uni point, was used to hunt big game. Archaeologists also excavated bones from a Diprotodon—a prehistoric giant wombat that was the largest marsupial that ever lived. Many archaeologists believe these animals and other Australian megafauna (giant animals) became extinct because of hunting by early humans. Some tools bore tiny bits of feathers as well as red ocher and white gypsum, two common minerals that were used as pigments (coloring materials) by Aboriginal people. Archaeologists believe the tools were decorated and perhaps used for ceremonial purposes.

Archaeologists know that the ancestors of today’s Aboriginal people arrived in Australia at least 50,000 years ago. Scientists believe that these first people came by boat from Southeast Asia, the closest land that was inhabited by human beings at that time. Archaeologists have long thought that the first people to arrive likely lived along the forested and well-watered coast where resources were abundant. Archaeologists believed the dry southern interior of Australia was too inhospitable for these early people. They thought the people of 50,000 years ago could not have survived in regions such as the Flinders Range because they did not yet have the technology to survive the challenging environment. The Warratyi rock shelter, however, proves that Australia’s earliest humans were capable explorers who could quickly adapt even to the harsh conditions of the continent’s arid interior.

October 21, 2016

Australian forensic science experts recently helped solve a centuries-old murder mystery when they determined that wounds on a prehistoric skeleton were inflicted by a boomerang. The skeleton of the unfortunate victim, nicknamed Kaakutja (an Aboriginal word meaning older brother), was discovered in 2014 buried in what is now Australia’s Toorale National Park in New South Wales. Kaakutja was quickly identified as an Aboriginal man, so archaeologists were called to excavate the remains. During the excavation, archaeologists noticed several sharp gashes across the skeleton’s skull, suggesting Kaakutja was the victim of homicide.

The skeletal remains of Kaakutja, an Aboriginal man felled by a boomerang, were found in New South Wales, Australia, and recently excavated and examined. Credit: © Antiquity Publications

The sharp wounds on Kaakutja’s skull appeared to be caused by a metal object like a sword. The wounds were almost certainly fatal because they showed no signs of healing. The scientists at first thought Kaakutja may have been killed in a hostile encounter with European colonists. Metal tools and weapons such as swords were unknown to Aboriginal people of Australia before the arrival of Europeans in the late 1700’s. But radiocarbon dating showed Kaakutja was buried around A.D.1260, about 500 years before the first Europeans stepped foot in Australia.

Forensic scientists then used computed tomography (CT) scans to closely examine the wounds on Kaakutja’s skull. The weapon that best fit the dimensions of Kaakutja’s wounds was found to be a sharp-edged, 18-inch- (46-centimeter-) long wonna, a type of wooden fighting boomerang. Boomerangs have played an important part in the culture of Aboriginal people of Australia through the centuries. A spinning boomerang hits a target with more force than a thrown rock or stick. For this reason, boomerangs are useful weapons for hunting and fighting. Fighting boomerangs like the wonna were often swung in close combat like a club.

Rock art depicting warring Aboriginal people holding shields, clubs, and boomerangs was discovered close to Kaakutja’s burial site in New South Wales, Australia. Credit: © Antiquity Publications

The scientists suspect Kaakutja was killed in an ancient territorial conflict between Aboriginal groups. Archaeologists know little about relations between different groups of Aboriginal people in Australia before the arrival of European colonists. But Kaakutja’s skeleton shows that violent conflict did occur. Also, nearby cave paintings made by prehistoric Aboriginal people depict people wielding shields, clubs, and the same type of fighting wonna that probably killed Kaakutja. With their examination completed, the archaeologists returned Kaakutja’s remains to a local Aboriginal group for traditional burial.

August 15, 2016

If you’re out on a nighttime walkabout in Australia, be careful that you don’t stroll too close to a billabong (water hole), lest you are grabbed by the terrifying Bunyip. According to tradition of the Aboriginal people of Australia, the Bunyip is a malevolent monster that lurks in the water, waiting to pounce upon its next meal. And that meal is sometimes human. It is said that on a quiet night in the Outback, you can hear the haunting cry of the Bunyip. Even today, Aboriginal people may steer clear of billabongs when they hear mysterious calls of the wild.

A terrifying depiction of the legendary Bunyip
Credit: State Library of Victoria

Most everyone in Australia has heard of the Bunyip, and it seems quite a few people know someone who says they saw one. Yet it is often impossible to find a person who has actually caught a glimpse of one. This may be why descriptions of the Bunyip vary widely. In some tales, it is a dog-like or seal-like creature. Bunyips have been described as being big as a horse and as small as a dog. They may have flippers, fangs, tusks, one or two eyes, shaggy fur, scales, or horns. Descriptions of the animal’s behavior also vary widely, from a man-eating monster to a timid plant-eating creature that shies away from humans.

When tales of the Bunyip reached the early European settlers of Australia, they  thought it may be yet another strange new creature (like kangaroos and koalas) that they had never before encountered. Several expeditions set out on vain attempts to capture a Bunyip. One expedition in 1846 was widely reported to have returned with the skull of a Bunyip (the skull was then supposedly lost). Most experts believe the skull was likely that of a horse or cow, perhaps modified to change its appearance. Today, scientists do not believe the Bunyip actually exists. They think that reported sightings are more likely the result of imagination, misidentification of other animals, or deliberate hoaxes.

Yet, legends of the Bunyip may not be all bull’s wool (nonsense). Some investigators consider the Bunyip to be a cryptid. A cryptid is a living thing whose existence has been suggested but not demonstrated (see cryptozoology). A few experts have suggested that the Bunyip could be a Diprotodon (giant wombat), a bear-sized Australian marsupial which is believed to have gone extinct more than 30,000 years ago. The Diprotodon likely spent days wallowing in shallow billabongs. The ancestors of Aboriginal people, who arrived in Australia more than 50,000 years ago, no doubt saw and probably hunted Diprotodon. It may be that stories of the Bunyip recount memories of ancestral encounters with this prehistoric giant in the Dreamtime, an ancient time in the belief of Aboriginal people of Australia when the first beings existed and the land was created.

The ax fragment found in Australia came from a ground-edge ax with a handle similar to those pictured here. Credit: © Stuart Hay, Australian National University

May 13, 2016

Archaeologists have discovered a small chip of polished volcanic basalt in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia that provides evidence that ancient Australians invented stone axes earlier than any other prehistoric people. The stone fragment was originally excavated in the 1990’s by archaeologists from the Australian National University (ANU) at Carpenter’s Gap, a prehistoric site in Windjana Gorge National Park. The ancient rock shelter is one of the earliest sites known to have been occupied by humans in Australia.

Axes are extremely useful tools found in every human society from ancient times up to the modern era. Axes have many uses, but they are typically used for chopping and shaping wood and as weapons. The most ancient axes had heads made of stone tied to handles made of hardwood. Archaeologists believe the rest of the Carpenter’s Gap ax head may have been carried off long ago after the excavated fragment  broke away during use. Stone Age axes are common at sites throughout the world—sites that span tens of thousands of years of prehistory. As metal technology developed over the past 6,000 years, ax heads began to be made of copper, bronze, and iron.

The Carpenter’s Gap fragment was not recognized as a part of a stone ax until 2014, when researchers at ANU began re-examing objects excavated from the site. Researchers noticed that the fragment, about  the size of a fingernail, had a polished edge produced by grinding the basalt against another rock to sharpen it. At the time, the most ancient polished stone axes—known from sites in Japan—dated to about 35,000 years ago. However, the Carpenter’s Gap ax fragment was excavated from the deepest layers of the site, which archaeologists date to between 46,000 and 49,000 years ago—the time when humans are thought to have first arrived in Australia.

Polished stone axes were independently invented in many regions of the world in ancient times, especially as people settled into villages and began farming. But no polished stone ax is known to be older than the Carpenter’s Gap ax fragment. Polished stone axes are completely unknown from prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia and on islands north of Australia before about 10,000 years ago, when farming was introduced to these regions. This shows that the first people to migrate to Australia did not bring this technology from elsewhere. The small fragment from Carpenter’s Gap shows that this revolutionary Stone Age technology was first invented by the ancient ancestors of Australian Aboriginal people.

Other World Book articles

• Aboriginal people of Australia
• Prehistoric people