48 Fun Facts About Aboriginal Australians

About how long ago did the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians first reach the continent?

About 60,000 years ago: the oldest finds date the first arrivals to between 50,000 and 65,000 years, and even with Ice Age seas far lower they had to cross open water from Asia.

What is the name for the body of creation stories, songlines and beliefs central to Aboriginal cultures?

The Dreaming is not a vanished age of myth: anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner called it the 'everywhen', a time in which past, present and future exist together.

About how many distinct languages did Aboriginal peoples speak when Europeans began colonising Australia?

About 250: more than 250 languages were spoken in 1788, but the 2021 census found little more than 150 of them still in use.

Which group of Indigenous Australians is ethnically distinct from Aboriginal Australians?

Torres Strait Islanders are Melanesian seafarers whose ancestry and customs tie them to Papua New Guinea rather than the mainland, so they are recognised as a separate Indigenous people.

What are the three colours of the Australian Aboriginal flag?

Black, red and yellow: black is for the people, red for the earth and ochre, yellow for the sun; made for a land rights rally, the design grew into a symbol for Aboriginal people everywhere.

Who designed the Aboriginal flag, first flown in Adelaide in 1971?

Harold Thomas, a Luritja artist from Alice Springs, kept the copyright in his design until 2022, when he signed it over to the Commonwealth so that anyone could use the flag freely.

Which prime minister's government made the Aboriginal flag an official flag of Australia in 1995?

Paul Keating's government had the flag proclaimed under the Flags Act in July 1995, 24 years after it first flew as a protest banner at a land rights rally in Adelaide.

Until the 1967 referendum, the Constitution said Aboriginal people were to be left out of which official figures?

Population counts: section 127 kept Aboriginal people out of the official tally until voters deleted it; the referendum did not give them the vote, which they had held federally since 1962.

Which prime minister called the 1967 referendum?

Harold Holt's government put the question to voters in May 1967, and five months after the Yes vote he set up the Council for Aboriginal Affairs to advise on federal policy.

From 1949, what gave Aboriginal people the federal vote even where their state denied it?

Military service: the 1949 law gave the federal vote to Aboriginal servicemen and veterans, but most others in Queensland and Western Australia had to wait until 1962.

Which 1992 High Court case rejected the doctrine of terra nullius and recognised native title?

Mabo v Queensland was brought by Eddie Mabo and fellow Meriam people over their ancestral land on Mer; he died of cancer in January 1992, five months before the judges ruled in his favour.

What does the Latin phrase terra nullius, used to justify colonisation, mean?

Land belonging to no one: on that footing Britain took the continent without signing a treaty with its peoples, a legal fiction the High Court threw out in 1992.

Which 2002 film follows three Aboriginal girls walking home across Western Australia from a government settlement?

Rabbit-Proof Fence takes its name from the fence the girls followed to find their way back; it is based on a book by Doris Pilkington, daughter of the eldest girl, Molly.

Which prime minister delivered the formal apology to the Stolen Generations on 13 February 2008?

Kevin Rudd delivered the apology within three months of winning office; John Howard's government had held out against one for the previous ten years.

What was the name of the 1997 report into the Stolen Generations?

Bringing Them Home drew on the testimony of 535 Indigenous people and called on governments to apologise; the federal Parliament did so eleven years later.

Who led the 1966 Wave Hill walk-off of Gurindji stockmen and their families?

Vincent Lingiari led about 200 Gurindji workers and their families off the Vestey family's cattle station over pay and conditions, and the strike grew into a demand for the return of their land.

Which prime minister handed land back to the Gurindji in a symbolic ceremony in August 1975?

Gough Whitlam poured a handful of red soil into the hand of the Gurindji strike leader to mark the transfer, nine years after the walk-off began.

Under what was the Aboriginal Tent Embassy first set up in Canberra on 26 January 1972?

A beach umbrella: four activists planted it on the lawn facing Parliament House after the McMahon government ruled out Aboriginal land rights in favour of leases, and tents soon replaced it.

Who became the first Indigenous Australian in Federal Parliament, as a senator in 1971?

Neville Bonner was appointed to fill a Queensland Senate vacancy left by a retiring Liberal, then won the seat in his own right at the 1972 election.

Which Aboriginal sprinter lit the Olympic flame in Sydney in 2000 and won the 400 metres?

Cathy Freeman ran her victory lap in Sydney carrying both the Aboriginal flag and the Australian flag.

Which Aboriginal tennis player won seven Grand Slam singles titles, including Wimbledon in 1971 and 1980?

Evonne Goolagong got her start when a local man saw her peering in from outside Barellan's tennis club and invited her to play; her 1980 title made her the first mother to win Wimbledon since 1914.

Which Aboriginal polymath and author appears on the Australian $50 note?

David Unaipon, a Ngarrindjeri preacher and inventor, wrote down his people's legends in the 1920s, only for the book to appear in 1930 under an anthropologist's name with no credit to him.

The Papunya Tula movement is famous for which style of art?

Dot painting took off at Papunya in 1971 after senior men painted a school mural and then moved to boards; the fields of dots came to veil sacred designs from outsiders.

In which regions was the didgeridoo traditionally played, rather than across the whole continent?

The eastern Kimberley and Arnhem Land: as late as 1938 an anthropologist found the instrument known only in that northern strip, and its spread across the rest of the continent is recent.

What is a woomera?

A spear-thrower: the woomera works like an extra joint in the arm, hurling the spear with far more speed and force than a bare-handed throw.

Which Yolngu dancer made his screen debut in Walkabout and later appeared in Crocodile Dundee and The Tracker?

David Gulpilil was a ceremonial dancer when director Nicolas Roeg cast him in Walkabout; three decades later The Tracker won him Australia's best actor award.

Mungo Lady, found in New South Wales in 1968, is among the world's oldest known examples of which funeral rite?

Cremation: her body was burned, the bones were crushed and burned a second time, and the remains were buried beside Lake Mungo.

Which people from modern Indonesia traded with northern Aboriginal groups before European contact?

The Makassar sailed from Sulawesi each December to gather sea cucumber, which they dried and sold on to China, in a trade that lasted until 1907.

Which Ice Age landmass, joining Australia to New Guinea, did the first people reach from Asia?

Sahul was never joined to Asia: deep water always lay between it and Sunda, the exposed shelf linking Borneo, Java and Sumatra to the mainland, so the first arrivals came by sea.

As of 2021, Indigenous people made up the largest share of the population in which part of Australia?

Northern Territory: about three in ten of its residents are Indigenous, yet the largest number, roughly a third of the national total, live in New South Wales.

Which Eora man, back from a voyage to England, sent the 1796 letter that is the first known Aboriginal text in English?

Bennelong dictated the letter a year after coming home, writing to a Mr Phillips who had looked after him in England and asking for stockings and handkerchiefs.

An all-Aboriginal team toured England in 1868, the first Australian side to do so, playing which sport?

Cricket: thirteen men from western Victoria played 47 matches in six months, and after play they drew crowds with boomerang displays.

The 1938 Day of Mourning marked what anniversary?

150 years since the First Fleet arrived: while Sydney celebrated, Aboriginal protesters met at the Australian Hall and passed a resolution demanding full citizen status and equality.

The petitions Yolngu leaders sent to Parliament from Yirrkala in 1963 were mounted on what?

Painted bark: the typed petitions, protesting a bauxite mine on Yolngu land, were framed with traditional painted designs and became the first such documents recognised by Parliament.

Which Arrernte activist led University of Sydney students on the 1965 Freedom Ride through rural New South Wales?

Charles Perkins and the riders made headlines at Moree, where they took Aboriginal children to the public pool in defiance of a council ban that was later scrapped.

Which former Fitzroy footballer and pastor became the first Aboriginal state governor in 1976?

Douglas Nicholls was nominated by Premier Don Dunstan, but his health failed within weeks of taking office and he stepped down in April 1977 after a stroke.

Which advisory body did the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart ask to have written into the Constitution?

A Voice to Parliament was the statement's first call, ahead of a Makarrata Commission for treaty-making and truth-telling; voters rejected it at a referendum in October 2023.

Which disease tore through the Aboriginal clans around Sydney in 1789, soon after British colonists settled there?

Smallpox, as the colonists recorded it, killed a great many Aboriginal people around Sydney Harbour yet barely touched the British; how it reached Sydney, and whether it was really chickenpox, is still argued.

Who was the first Indigenous Australian to captain the nation in any sport, leading the 1973 Kangaroos?

Arthur Beetson spent his prime playing for New South Wales against his home state; in 1980, aged 35 and in reserve grade, he was picked to lead Queensland in the first State of Origin match.

Which Tasmanian Aboriginal woman's skeleton was displayed in a Hobart museum for decades after her death in 1876?

Truganini's body was dug up in 1878 on condition that it never be shown to the public; it went on display anyway, and her ashes were finally scattered on the water near her homeland in 1976.

Kriol, the most widely spoken Aboriginal language at the 2021 census, grew out of which language?

English: Kriol grew out of a frontier pidgin into a full creole language of northern Australia, and its 7,400 home speakers outnumber those of any traditional Aboriginal language.

Which term for territory expresses the spiritual bond between language groups and their land?

Country is spoken of as alive, a living being that people are part of and look after rather than property they own; the formal Welcome to Country takes its name from the idea.

Watercolourist Albert Namatjira, of the Western Arrernte people, was born and raised at which Central Australian mission?

Hermannsburg: in 1936 Namatjira guided visiting painter Rex Battarbee through the ranges by camel and learned watercolour technique from him along the way.

Uluru's colonial name honoured Sir Henry Ayers, a premier of which colony that then governed the Northern Territory?

South Australia ran the Territory until 1911, so surveyor William Gosse named the rock for its leader in 1873; in 1985 the title deeds were handed back to its Anangu owners.

Which Bidjigal warrior waged a twelve-year guerrilla war against the Sydney colonists from 1790?

Pemulwuy took seven pieces of buckshot in 1797 and still escaped from hospital in a leg iron, convincing many that guns could not kill him; he was shot dead in 1802.

Which Yolngu band from Arnhem Land had an international hit in 1991 with the protest song 'Treaty'?

Yothu Yindi wrote 'Treaty' after Bob Hawke's 1988 promise of a treaty with Aboriginal people went unkept; it only charted once a dance remix was released.

Which July celebration of Indigenous culture grew out of a 1938 Aboriginal protest in Sydney?

NAIDOC Week began as a day of protest held on the Sunday before Australia Day; it moved to July in 1955 to become a celebration as well, and grew to a full week in 1975.

Which dual Brownlow Medallist for the Sydney Swans was named Australian of the Year in 2014?

Adam Goodes was booed relentlessly in his last seasons after calling out a racial slur from the crowd, and retired in 2015; four years later the AFL and its clubs apologised for failing to back him.