Songlines
Country as something carried and transmitted rather than owned. Named tracks across the continent, the Seven Sisters, and the Arnhem Land material that can be shown. Restricted and ceremonial material is excluded, which is a real limit on what this facet can hold, and the limit is the point rather than an omission.
Part of Australia
73 moments in this segment.
- - Three Aboriginal people photographed at the Crystal Palace. A Negretti and Zambra photograph of three Aboriginal people exhibited at the Crystal Palace in London in 1884, now held by the Rijksmuseum. They were displayed to paying audiences as a commercial attraction and are not named in the record. The image is included as evidence of that traffic, made by the exhibitors rather than by the people shown.
- - Hand stencils at Bedford Creek. Ochre hand stencils on sandstone at Bedford Creek in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, photographed on a Kodachrome slide in 1985. Stencilled hands are among the most widespread markings in Australia and were made by blowing pigment from the mouth across a hand pressed to the rock. The Blue Mountains sit on Dharug and Gundungurra Country.
- - 110 53999 - Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson 'Yanjilypiri Jukurrpa (Star Dreaming)' 1985. 1985 held by National Gallery of Australia.
- - Painting at Nourlangie Rock. Figures painted on a rock shelter wall at Nourlangie in Kakadu, Northern Territory, photographed on Kodachrome in 1988. The site, properly Burrungkuy, has been painted and repainted over thousands of years by Bininj people. Kakadu was inscribed on the World Heritage List for both its natural and its cultural values.
- - Map of Victorian language groups. A coloured map of language and group territories across Victoria, drawn in 2008 from published ethnographic sources. It shows the density of distinct groups in the southeast, where dispossession came earliest and hardest. Any single line on such a map compresses relationships that were negotiated rather than fixed.
- - Aboriginal Health College of NSW-The Message Stick. &MRC of NSW and concerning New South Wales. Message sticks carried invitations, declarations and death notices between groups. Filed as a songlines record, posted by AH&MRC of NSW in 2009.
- - Diagram of an Arnhem Land cosmogony. A sketch made in 2009 setting out the north coast Arnhem Land account of world formation as it was demonstrated by the actor David Gulpilil during the making of the film Ten Canoes, after a painting by the Ganalbingu artist Johnny Bulunbulun. Ten Canoes was directed by Rolf de Heer with Peter Djigirr and released in 2006, entirely in Yolŋu Matha. The diagram is a European drawing of an explanation, not a ceremonial design.
- - Living Kaurna Cultural Centre at Warriparinga. The cultural centre at Warriparinga in southern Adelaide, opened in September 2002 after more than nine years of negotiation between the Kaurna people and the Marion council. Warriparinga sits on the Sturt River and is tied to the Kaurna account of the ancestor Tjilbruke. The building holds a gallery and teaching spaces.
- - Smoking ceremony at a repatriation. Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner conducting a smoking ceremony during the return of ancestral remains in 2009. Repatriation from overseas museums has been a continuing negotiation since the 1980s, and elders travel to receive their Old People in person. The Ngarrindjeri nation lies along the lower Murray and the Coorong in South Australia.
- - Emu caller in the Australian Museum. A wooden emu caller on display at the Australian Museum in Sydney. Callers imitate the drumming sound an emu makes, drawing the bird within range of a hunter. Hunting technique, the behaviour of the animal and the songs that carry that knowledge were learned as one body of practice.
- - The Warburton River. The Warburton in the far north of South Australia, photographed in 2010 by Haydyn Bromley, an Adnyamathanha guide and cultural director. The river drains into Kati Thanda, Lake Eyre, and its channels only run after monsoon rain far to the north. Desert routes followed the water that arrives unpredictably in country like this.
- - Monument at the Franklinford mission site. A stone monument marking the site of the Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate station at Franklinford in central Victoria, photographed in 2010. The protectorate stations of the 1840s concentrated Dja Dja Wurrung people away from their own country. Removal from Country broke the practice of walking and singing it.
- - Aboriginal motif at Darwin Airport. A design worked into the roof of the exit from the Darwin airport terminal, photographed in April 2010. Airport and public building commissions became a common route for Aboriginal design into civic architecture from the 1990s. Darwin sits on Larrakia Country.
- - Part 1 The Message Stick Youtube.mov. 2012.
- - Mitchell's engraving of a burial ground at Milmeridien. A plate from Thomas Livingstone Mitchell's account of his expeditions, published in 1839, showing a burial ground on the Bogan River in New South Wales. Mitchell recorded carved trees and marked ground along the rivers he surveyed, and most of what he drew has since been destroyed. The engraving is a surveyor's record made without permission from the people whose ground it was.
- - Poeppel Corner survey marker. The top of the post at Poeppel Corner, where the borders of South Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland meet in the Simpson Desert, photographed in August 2013. Augustus Poeppel set the original marker in 1880. Colonial surveyors ruled straight lines across desert whose existing routes ran between waters instead.
- - Kungkarangkalpa: Seven Sisters Songline. 2013.
- - Songlines project unveiled in Adelaide. 2014.
- - Message stick in the Australian Museum. A carved message stick on display at the Australian Museum in Sydney, photographed in 2014. Message sticks were carried by envoys between groups and their marks keyed the bearer to a message that was spoken aloud, so the object and the speech travelled together. They moved along the same routes across Country as songs and trade goods did.
- - Welcome to Country at Gough Whitlam's memorial. A Welcome to Country delivered at the memorial service for Gough Whitlam at Sydney Town Hall in November 2014. The Welcome is given by a traditional owner of the ground the gathering stands on and is a protocol of permission rather than a performance. Whitlam's government legislated the first land rights statute for the Northern Territory, passed after his dismissal.
- - Ngangkari Tjukurpa. 2014.
- - Margot Neale National Museum of Australia. 2015.
- - The language collection at AIATSIS. Shelved recordings and papers from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies collection in Canberra, photographed in 2015. UNESCO inscribed the institute's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language holdings on the Memory of the World register, recognising them as the principal surviving documentation of hundreds of languages. Songs, place names and route knowledge are held in those recordings alongside grammars and word lists.
- - Salt pan off the Stuart Highway. A dry salt pan southeast of Mount Gunson in South Australia, photographed on 13 October 2015. Salt lakes recur along desert travelling routes as landmarks and as barriers. The Stuart Highway follows the line of the overland telegraph laid in 1872.
- - Songlines on Screen Preview. 2016.
- - Songlines explained: A 360 experience with Rhoda Roberts. 2016.
- - Songlines projected on the Sydney Opera House. The 2016 Vivid Sydney projection titled Songlines lighting the sails of the Opera House, designed with Aboriginal artists including Karla Dickens, Djon Mundine and Reko Rennie. Bennelong Point, where the building stands, is Gadigal land. Public projection work of this kind is authored art rather than ceremonial material.
- - Songlines | SBS VR | Available Online. Songlines, published by SBS On Demand. SBS television launched in October 1980, and NITV began free-to-air broadcasts under SBS in 2012. Filed as a songlines record, posted by SBS On Demand in 2016.
- - Koori Art Expressions 2016 Exhibition: 'Songlines'. ', published by Australian National Maritime Museum and concerning New South Wales. Filed as a songlines record, posted by Australian National Maritime Museum in 2017.
- - Watson's map of southeast Queensland languages. A map of language group boundaries in southeastern Queensland compiled by F. J. Watson in 1941 from earlier records. Watson grouped the Brisbane languages under the term Yugarabul. Maps of this kind are colonial reconstructions rather than statements by the groups themselves, and boundaries drawn on them are contested.
- - Trackbed of the old Ghan near Lake Eyre South. The abandoned formation of the narrow gauge Central Australia Railway near Lake Eyre South, photographed in 2017 after the rails were lifted in the early 1980s. The line was routed along a chain of springs and waterholes that Aboriginal travellers had used long before surveyors mapped it. Afghan cameleers worked the same corridor, and the railway took its nickname from them.
- - Painting the Songlines - Warlukurlangu Artists of Yuendumu. 2017.
- - Following the Seven Sisters - Martu Artist Ngalangka Nola Taylor. 2018.
- - Songlines of Aboriginal Australia. 2018.
- - Empowered Communities tjukurpa (English). ), published by Empowered Communities - NPY Region. The material concerns Aṉangu Country. Filed as a songlines record, posted by Empowered Communities - NPY Region in 2018.
- - Winanyaya Gunidjarr at Dandry Gorge. One of the Sculptures in the Scrub overlooking Dandry Gorge in Timmallallie National Park in northern New South Wales, photographed in 2018. The five works were made with Gamilaroi people to mark their connection to the Pilliga scrub. The first four were installed together and the site is reached by a walking track.
- - Yundu Yundu sculpture in the Pilliga. A second of the Dandry Gorge sculptures, standing above the gorge in the Pilliga country of New South Wales. The works name features and beings of the surrounding scrub in Gamilaroi terms. Photograph taken in 2018.
- - The Message Stick Documentary. 2018.
- - Makara - The Seven Sisters. 2018.
- - TJUKURPA THE MOVIE. 2018.
- - Message Stick Walk - Alwyn Doolan Documentary P1. 2019.
- - Ngurrungurrudjba, Yellow Water. The floodplain billabong known as Ngurrungurrudjba in Kakadu National Park, photographed in 2019. The park is jointly managed with its Aboriginal traditional owners under lease to the Commonwealth, and its wetlands sit at the centre of local seasonal knowledge. Kakadu was declared in stages from 1979.
- - Signing repatriation documents in Leipzig. Ngarrindjeri elder Major Sumner, Leipzig ethnographic museum director Leontine Meijer van Mensch and Australian ambassador Lynette Wood sign the transfer of ancestral remains at the Grassi Museum in 2019. German collections acquired large numbers of Aboriginal remains in the nineteenth century. Return requires the receiving nation to be identified before any transfer can proceed.
- - Paradise – What is beneath the water? An ancient dreaming story | The Pool. Paradise , What is beneath the water, An ancient dreaming story, published by ABC Australia. This record is filed under Warlpiri Country. Filed as a songlines record, posted by ABC Australia in 2019.
- - National Museum of Australia: Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters Interactive. 2019.
- - Secret 🖐🏿 Ancient Black_Aussie Songlines_into_Brisbane by Alex_Bond of Gubbi_Gubbi_First_Nation. 2020.
- - Altyerre (Dreamtime). ), published by Mark Wilson - Topic. The people named here are Arrernte. Filed as a songlines record, posted by Mark Wilson - Topic in 2020.
- - Aboriginal Songlines - Your Journey. 2020.
- - The Wirangu Seven Sisters creation story | Walking Together | ABC Australia. The Wirangu Seven Sisters creation story, published by ABC Australia. The Seven Sisters songline crosses several language groups and was the subject of the National Museum of Australia exhibition curated by Margo Ngawa Neale. Filed as a songlines record, posted by ABC Australia in 2020.
- - Dreaming Tracks Across Australia - The King of the Mountains. 2021.
- - Seven Sisters songlines tour with Margo Neale | Songlines & Lead Indigenous curator, NMA. Seven Sisters songlines tour with Margo Neale, published by Western Australian Museum. The Seven Sisters songline crosses several language groups and was the subject of the National Museum of Australia exhibition curated by Margo Ngawa Neale. Filed as a songlines record, posted by Western Australian Museum in 2021.
- - TJUKURPA. 2023 retrospective. The material concerns Aṉangu Country. Filed as a songlines record, posted by Aboriginal Art UK in 2021.
- - Mural at the Logan Art Gallery. A mural on the eastern wall of the Logan City Council art gallery in Logan Central, Queensland, photographed in 2021. Logan has one of the largest urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations in the state. The gallery commissions local artists for the wall.
- - TAL 2021 Lecture Programme - Guided tour of Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters exhibition. 2021.
- - Dr Piers Kelly, "The linguistics of message sticks", University of Melbourne. 2021.
- - Marlaloo Songline. 2022.
- - Walking Through A Songline. 2022.
- - Canberra social events -Connection. Songlines World Premiere opening at National Museum of Australia. 's Go Mum! and concerning Australian Capital Territory. Filed as a songlines record, posted by Let's Go Mum! in 2022.
- - Canberra exhibition- Connection. Songlines by Grande Experiences at the National Museum of Australia. 's Go Mum! and concerning Australian Capital Territory. Filed as a songlines record, posted by Let's Go Mum! in 2022.
- - Connection: Songlines from Australia's First Peoples @ National Museum Of Australia.. 2022.
- - Learning Tjukurpa at Uluru 29/8/2022. 348 metres above the surrounding plain, and Aṉangu are its Traditional Owners. The subject sits on Aṉangu Country. Filed as a songlines record, posted by Grahame Lamb in 2022.
- - "Walking Through a Songline", as part of the Australia museum exhibition.. 2022.
- - Professor Margo Neale, National Museum of Australia,. 2022.
- - Kapi Tjukurpa. 2023.
- - TJUKURPA OF THE NATION. 2023.
- - Don't Miss This! Songlines, Tracking the Seven Sisters at the Musée du Quai Branly. 2024.
- - Indigenous Wisdom: Songlines | Great Maps Explained. Indigenous Wisdom: Songlines, published by Mapster. Filed as a songlines record, posted by Mapster in 2024.
- - Indigenous Dreamtime Wisdom (Tjukurpa) That Mirrors Hindu Turiya’s Transcendental Awareness. 2025.
- - Indigenous Songlines: Following the Seven Sisters Story Across Australia. 2025.
- - How They Mapped A Continent Without Satellites - Aboriginal SONGLINES🇦🇺. 🇦🇺, published by The Relic Explorer. The Seven Sisters songline crosses several language groups and was the subject of the National Museum of Australia exhibition curated by Margo Ngawa Neale. Filed as a songlines record, posted by The Relic Explorer in 2026.
- - Darug Aboriginal Art Screensaver | Turtle Dreaming & Songlines | 1 Hour Ambient 4K. Darug Aboriginal Art Screensaver, published by Darug Ambient Art. Filed as a songlines record, posted by Darug Ambient Art in 2026.
- - The River | Darug Aboriginal Art Screensaver | Dreaming & Songlines | Ambient 4K |. The River, published by Darug Ambient Art. Filed as a songlines record, posted by Darug Ambient Art in 2026.
- - "Aboriginal Message Sticks" could help us understand Ice Age European Writing. 2026.