Most anthropologists will agree that Australian Aboriginal people represent one of the oldest known living cultures on Earth.

Dating back tens of thousands of years before European settlement, Aboriginal people roamed the Australian landscape, living in harmony in a nomadic partnership with nature. Australian Aboriginal people are a diverse group of people, living vastly different lifestyles in each corner of the country. There are up to 700 traditional societies in Australia and over 200 languages.

Indigenous Australians survived in harsh climatic and environmental conditions which ranged from cold temperate to hot tropical, coping with arid conditions and torrential rains. They have dwelt for many thousands of years in ways that sustained their societies while conserving resources, protecting fragile soils and leaving a light footprint on the environment.

Rock Art and Ancient Culture

According to Australian Aboriginal belief, spirit ancestors breathe life and energy into traditional dance, song and design and play a crucial role in indigenous culture throughout Western Australia.

These ancestral spirits possessed supernatural powers, enabling them, during the Dreamtime of the world's creation, to change into human, animal or other forms.

Spirit ancestors govern and determine Aboriginal peoples ritual activity, imparting a specific meaning to every step of a dance, every verse of a song and each pattern in a painting.

In the late 1990's, a collection of Australian Aboriginal rock art featuring distinctive stick-like images was discovered in Australia's North West region. Archaeological dating placed the Bradshaw paintings, named after their recent discoverer, among the oldest paintings on record.

History is reflected in art, which varies in form from cave-paintings, rock art and bark paintings in the north, to the intricately patterned dot-paintings throughout the central Golden Outback. And while the paintings are aesthetically beautiful, each one is unique and tells an individual story.

Dance and body-painting is also a method of story-telling, so corroborees - or traditional dancing - remain as important ceremonies depicting dreamtimes stories of evolution, and how the world was formed.

Your Own Piece of Aboriginal Culture

Indigenous Australian tourism experiences are in high demand by international visitors. To cater for this, several excellent interpretive centres have been established across Western Australia, including Kings Park in Perth city, Karijini in the North West and The Kodja Place in Kojonup in the South West.

Authentic Aboriginal art can be purchased at numerous art and craft outlets in the regional centres, Perth city and Fremantle. There are also excellent Aboriginal tourism products in many towns across the State.

Some regional tour operators offer packages where visitors can experience personalised Aboriginal interactions. These unique experiences can range from short, guided walking tours to find traditional medicines and bush foods, known as 'bush-tucker' to extended safari tours throughout the Kimberley.

These tours provide a fascinating insight into survival - you'll be amazed at how much food and water is available in what appears to be a barren landscape, when you know how and where to find it.

For further information about authentic indigenous tourism experiences see Western Australian Indigenous Tourism Operators Committee (WAITOC).