Mapping Indigenous Australia

The Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia, edited by Bill Arthur and Frances Morphy from ANU’s CAEPR, has just gone online. You can select a variety of overlays, including Indigenous social indicators, historical data, etc. Fun for the whole (map-loving) family.

Below is a map of the ACT, which taught me two things I didn’t know before:

• Each dot represents an estimated 50 people in 1788. So the best estimate of the Indigenous population of the ACT before European settlement was 50.
• The lines represent Tindale Map regions. I’d always thought that the ACT was fully encompassed by Ngunawal land, but actually a greater share of the area was traditionally the domain of Walgalu people.