Australia Photo Gallery

advertisement

Australia is an exotic land of 18 million inhabitants, but the most exotic Australians of all are its first inhabitants—the Aborigines. Although Aborigines are sometimes thought of as Australia's forgotten people, Aboriginal contributions to the world have included the boomerang and such distinctive words as "kangaroo," "koala," and "didgeridoo" (a native instrument made from a hollowed-out tree).

Today about 230,000 Aborigines inhabit Australia, and the Northern Territory is home to the most Aboriginal people still living on ancestral lands. On these lands, traditional Aboriginal lifestyles continue with a minimum of cultural hybridization, and the Top End region—the tropical northern third of the Northern Territory—offers three of the most exotic Aboriginal areas open to outsiders. They are the Tiwi Islands, Kakadu National Park, and the Aboriginal homeland of Arnhemland.