Walkabout is a rite of passage in Australian Aboriginal society, during which males undergo a journey during adolescence, typically ages 10 to 16, and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months to make the spiritual and traditional transition into manhood.
: to go on a walkabout (a long walking journey on land that is far from towns and cities) an Aborigine who has gone walkabout. British, informal + humorous. used to say that something or someone cannot be found. My keys have gone walkabout.
Myths such as these make Dreamtime the foundation of all Aboriginal oral tradition and spiritual belief. Even today, to go on an Australian walkabout is to spiritually connect with the land and relive Dreamtime. This is a sacred experience that is available to all visitors who go on an Australian walkabout.
The absence of any real ties to their traditional culture, including language, readily inspire Aborigines to migrate. For many Aborigines on reserves, rapidly expanding populations, accompanied by little increase in housing or jobs, have necessitated movement to the city during the past thirty years. Since the 1950s.
Aboriginal land was taken over by British colonists on the premise that the land belonged to no-one ('terra nullius'). The history of Aboriginal dispossession is central to understanding contemporary Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal relations.
The land is a link between all aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people's existence - spirituality, culture, language, family, law and identity. Each person is entrusted with the cultural knowledge and responsibility to care for the land they identify with through kinship systems.
Proportion of all land that is Indigenous owned or controlled. Nationally as at June 2022, 16.1 per cent of Australia's land area was owned or controlled by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This is unchanged from the same time in the previous two years (June 2020 and 2021) (figure SE15a. 1).
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
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.
Traditionally, a “walkabout” is an Australian Aboriginal rite of passage that marks the transition from adolescence to adulthood. It provides a young person with the opportunity to practice and demonstrate the skills and knowledge required of their community's adults.
Traditionally, the highly creative application of body paint has been used as a way for Aboriginal people to show important aspects of their lives, such as social status, familial group, tribe, ancestry, spirituality and geography.
The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 has resulted in almost 50 per cent of the Northern Territory being returned to Aboriginal peoples. Some state governments followed the lead of the Australian Government and introduced their own land rights legislation.
The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (see above) provides the basis upon which Aboriginal Australian people in the Northern Territory can claim rights to land based on traditional occupation. The freehold land cannot be sold or transferred, but it can be leased.
'Walkabout' for many First Nations people is a contentious word and considered an archaic colonial term. Its use by non-Aboriginal people is considered inappropriate. Groups such as Reconciliation Queensland Inc advise against its use when discussing First Nations cultures.
Go walkabout can be used to refer to someone deliberately leaving a place for any one of a number of reasons, such as going on holiday or getting a cup of coffee ("Where's Joe?" "Gone walkabout."). Go walkabout is also a synonym of go missing and is used of everything from missing persons to missing car keys.
Australian goodbye is “Hooroo”; sometimes they even “cheerio” like British people, a UK slang word.
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.
After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as 'New Holland'.
'Nation', 'community', 'people', 'mob' or the local language or Page 3 culture group name is usually preferable to 'tribe'. 'Mob' is an Aboriginal English word and as such may be more appropriate, but community acceptance may be required before using this word.
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.
Based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) projections, the number of Indigenous Australians in 2021 was estimated to be 881,600.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders: Australia's First Peoples.
Foreign ownership of Australian farmland increased last year but remained flat as a percentage of the overall total, with China holding the most land.
The United States and United Kingdom are the biggest investors in Australia, followed by Belgium, Japan and Singapore. China is our tenth largest foreign investor, with 1.9 per cent of the total.