Uluru might be one of Australia's most iconic landmarks, but it's also a hugely important part of the country's cultural history. The landscape surrounding the monolith has been inhabited for thousands and thousands of years – long before the country was invaded in the 1800s.
Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park, NT
The literal and spiritual heart of Australia, Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park encompasses an area centred on Uluru and Kata Tjuta, two immense sandstone formations rising out of the red sand of the Central Australian desert.
The figure shows that in 2022, the highest proportion of Indigenous Australians lived in New South Wales (33.2%), followed by Queensland (28.2%) and Western Australia (12.5%). The Australian Capital Territory has the smallest proportion of Australia's Indigenous population (1.0%).
Uluru. Sometimes known as Ayers Rock, Uluru is without doubt the most sacred site in Aboriginal folklore. It's so sacred, in fact, that the government is banning visitors from climbing it.
One-third (32.7%) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in NSW lived in Greater Sydney in 2021.
Sacred sites are places within the landscape that have a special meaning or significance under Aboriginal tradition. Hills, rocks, waterholes, trees, plains, lakes, billabongs and other natural features can be sacred sites.
Madjedbebe is the oldest known site showing the presence of humans in Australia. Archaeological excavations conducted by Clarkson et al. (2017) yielded evidence to suggest that Madjedbebe was first occupied by humans possibly by 65,000 +/- 6,000 years ago and at least by 50,000 years ago.
A new genomic study has revealed that Aboriginal Australians are the oldest known civilization on Earth, with ancestries stretching back roughly 75,000 years.
The largest Aboriginal communities – the Pitjantjatjara, the Arrernte, the Luritja and the Warlpiri – are all from Central Australia. Throughout the history of the continent, there have been many different Aboriginal groups, each with its own individual language, culture, and belief structure.
There is no one Aboriginal word that all Aborigines use for Australia; however, today they call Australia, ""Australia"" because that is what it is called today. There are more than 250 aboriginal tribes in Australia. Most of them didn't have a word for ""Australia""; they just named places around them.
New South Wales had the largest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population (339,500 people), followed by Queensland (273,200 people) and Western Australia (120,000 people). These three states comprised almost three-quarters of the total Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population (732,800 people or 74.5%).
The Anangu (pronounced arn-ung-oo) are the traditional indigenous owners of Uluru, which means great pebble, and the surrounding Kata Tjuta National Park. To the traditional owners of the land, Uluru is incredibly sacred and spiritual, a living and breathing landscape in which their culture has always existed.
Being Australia's largest city, Sydney – and the harbour in particular – might also be one of our most internationally recognised 'Aussie' destinations.
Amaroo - Aboriginal Meaning Beautiful Place - Capture magazine.
Aboriginal origins
Humans are thought to have migrated to Northern Australia from Asia using primitive boats. A current theory holds that those early migrants themselves came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, which would make Aboriginal Australians the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: Australia's First Peoples.
All living Aboriginal Australians descend from a single founding population that arrived about 50,000 years ago, the study shows. They swept around the continent, along the coasts, in a matter of centuries.
It is true that there has been, historically, a small number of claims that there were people in Australia before Australian Aborigines, but these claims have all been refuted and are no longer widely debated. The overwhelming weight of evidence supports the idea that Aboriginal people were the first Australians.
The Pintupi Nine were a group of nine Pintupi people who remained unaware of European colonisation of Australia and lived a traditional desert-dwelling life in Australia's Gibson Desert until 1984, when they made contact with their relatives near Kiwirrkurra.
Prehistory. It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years.
Uluru and Kata Tjuta started to form about 550 million years ago. Back then, the Petermann Ranges to the west of Kata Tjuta were much taller than they are now. Rainwater flowed down the mountains, eroding sand and rock and dropping it in big fan shapes on the plains.
In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s.
Bev Manton, Chairperson of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, observes that "some 900 sites have been destroyed in recent years… with recent figures showing up to five permits [to destroy cultural heritage] being issued a week".