12 of Australia’s best Indigenous cultural experiences
Holidaying here this year means Australians have the perfect opportunity to immerse themselves in Aboriginal culture.
Wukalina Walk, Tasmania
Tasmania’s Wukalina Walk is a profound experience that will likely challenge your preconceptions about the state’s Indigenous history. In Lutruwita/Tasmania’s northeast, walk with palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal people) on country over four days. The experience starts with climbing Wukalina/Mount William. From its summit on a clear day, you can spy the Furneaux Group of islands that loom large in recent palawa history. After two nights in a stunning architect-designed bush camp, an epic beach hike past granite boulders glazed with orange lichen brings you to Eddystone Point Lighthouse. The landmark and surrounds have been handed back. The only way to stay in the lighthouse keeper’s cottage and ascend the maritime beacon is to earn it the hard way — with your feet.
Mutawintji National Park, NSW
When traditional owners tried to wrest back some control over the Mutawintji lands near Broken Hill in far west NSW, it proved a long battle. Following their 1983 blockade of what was then Mootwingee National Park, the area (encompassing a national park, nature reserve and historic site) was handed back to Aboriginal owners 15 years later. Today, it’s jointly managed with NSW National Parks. This significant spot is where tribes from as far away as the Flinders Ranges and Tibooburra would meet. Tour the site with an Indigenous ranger to see stunning galleries of ochre hand stencils and engravings pecked into the rocks.
The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, NSW
Sydney’s 30ha Royal Botanic Garden is where Europeans first cleared native land. Today, it’s become a place of education where 90-minute cultural tours explain how the Gadigal people, the area’s traditional custodians, used the flora in a multitude of creative ways. Lomandra (or mat rushes), for example, can be used for fishing and weaving. You can also grind its seeds into damper and quench a thirst by chewing the pale stems of the long blades. Even a banksia flower head proves handy, with its bristles making it the perfect hairbrush. The garden also offers three bush tucker experiences that include tasting bush foods.
Jellurgal Aboriginal Cultural Centre, QLD
Against a backdrop of Gold Coast glitz, dive into ancient times at Burleigh Head National Park. As joggers cruise past on the picturesque beachside walkway that traces Tallebudgera Creek before wrapping around Jellurgal (Burleigh Headland), stop to examine an ochre pit and shell middens. Learn more about the magical mountain that inspired many Dreamtime creation stories as you walk with a guide. The nearby Jellurgal Aboriginal Cultural Centre leads these eye-opening tours into the park. An ochre blessing is swiped onto the back of your hand before you learn to see the park in a completely new light.
Walkabout Cultural Adventures, QLD
It’s quite an experience to pick up a bamboo spear and follow Juan Walker as he stalks through the shallows of Cooya Beach, his home base near Port Douglas. Hunting for mud crabs as they scuttle over rippled sand is just one of the highlights of Walker’s tour. He’ll also show you how to identify a veritable pharmacy of bush medicines and supermarket of bush foods sprouting from this lush mangrove-fringed country between the World Heritage-listed Daintree Rainforest and Great Barrier Reef. His tours can also include taking a dip in the cool, crystal-clear, boulder-lined Mossman River as it rushes through the depths of Mossman Gorge.
Girri Girra Aboriginal Experiences, NSW
Head into the Central Coast’s Bouddi National Park with Aboriginal guide Tim Selwyn and prepare to have your world view shaken up as he shares its secrets. Selwyn will not only show you new ways of seeing this country overlooking the mouth of the Hawkesbury River but will impart gentle lessons on respect (take the kids, you won’t regret it). He will also sing, in a voice so stunning it will linger long in the memory. You might find your eyes ringed with white ochre as you’re transformed into a powerful owl. It’s an unusual but remarkable tour experience. Just go with it.
Uluru, NT
Uluru is Australia’s spiritual heart. This makes it the perfect place to sit with a Central Desert artist and learn how to “read” the symbols incorporated into artworks. Ayers Rock Resort offers dot-painting workshops that include this opportunity to learn from artists before painting your own story using the pictorial language. Inside Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, visit the Cultural Centre to learn more about the Dreaming stories that are entwined with this Red Centre landscape. Park rangers also offer a free guided Mala Walk at the base of Uluru. Here, they point out rock art and share the Tjukurpa (creation stories) of some of the monolith’s formations.
Tiwi Islands, NT
All it takes is a 2.5-hour boat ride from Darwin to land in the middle of one of Australia’s most distinctive and intact Indigenous cultures. Tiwi Islanders, who live across neighbouring Bathurst and Melville islands, are known for their ceremonial burial poles, big smiles, traditional ways and extreme love of AFL. On smaller Bathurst Island, head to the Early Mission Precinct to find the decorative Catholic church that features in the film Top End Wedding. Nearby are monuments that hint at the islands’ fascinating wartime history. Browse the artworks at Tiwi Designs and at the museum learn more about the islanders’ Dreaming stories and complex kinship and marriage systems.
Wilpena Pound, SA
Wilpena Pound is a gargantuan natural amphitheatre within South Australia’s Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park. The park’s complex heritage includes both Indigenous and pastoral histories. Learn more about both cultures by taking the Yura Udnyu walking tour (Yura is the name for the Adnyamathanha people who have lived in the Flinders Ranges for tens of thousands of years and Udnyu means “white”) to Old Wilpena Station, one of Australia’s best preserved pastoral heritage sites, and the contemporary Ikara — The Meeting Place artwork. The piece is the first attempt within the state to acknowledge and interpret how farming impacted an Indigenous community.
Ngurrangga Tours, WA
Murujuga National Park, in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, is home to the world’s highest concentration of rock art. Head into the park with Ngurrangga Tours’ Clinton Walker and let him show you extraordinary images that reach right back in time to depict megafauna and other extinct species, through to more recent documenting of first European contact. Walker also runs tours to Millstream-Chichester National Park, where you can learn about the songlines that run through this outback region. On Walker’s bush-tucker tours, help forage for seasonal ingredients such as berries, wattleseeds and mud crabs that will go towards making up one tasty feast.
Mount Gulaga, NSW
Take a deep-dive into Indigenous culture over two nights at Gulaga National Park near Narooma on the NSW far south coast. Ngaran Ngaran Culture Awareness’s eye-opening Yuin Retreat starts with a smoking ceremony and yarning circle. A full day is then spent either exploring Mount Gulaga, a forest-clad ancient volcano known as the “mother mountain” to the local Yuin people, on foot or completing a drive-and-walk day tour. After that, there’s a chance to participate in Indigenous wellness and healing sessions. Throughout the retreat, meals showcase the flavours of the world’s oldest food culture.
Dreamtime Dive & Snorkel, QLD
One of Australia’s most novel Indigenous tours combines the world’s largest living structure — the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef — with the world’s oldest living culture. Dreamtime Dive & Snorkel, which launched in 2018, cruises out from Cairns to explore two of the outer reef’s best diving and snorkelling sites. Aboard are Indigenous sea rangers who relay Dreaming stories from four tribes (Gimuy Walubara Yidinji, Gunggandji, Mandingalbay Yidinji and Yirrganydji) whose lands stretch from Port Douglas to the Frankland Islands south of Cairns. One story tells how the reef was formed when a hunter speared a sacred black stingray.
This story was published in April 2021 and has since been updated.