Australia: Meet the Aborigines

For once, a TV commercial actually seemed convincing. A girl in a bikini stood next to a turquoise sea. Large wild animals hopped across the grass. Aborigines danced in a circle. "We've been rehearsing for over 40,000 years," one of them said. Then she smiled and asked, "So where the bloody hell are you?" You have to admit: an invitation like that doesn't come every day. So why not go there and meet them?

Aborigines are actually not one people, but hundreds of different groups, each with its own language. Australia's Northern Territory contains large national parks and vast areas of land that have been given back to traditional communities. It's an excellent place to make contact.

If you go...
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Darwin, capital of the Territory, was named after naturalist Charles Darwin (see Spotlight 10/06); and his expression "survival of the fittest" is what you think of when you visit the local museum. On display there are deadly box jellyfish with four-metre-long tentacles, spiders and scorpions as big as your hand, and a crocodile the size of a canoe. Does that explain why I haven't seen anybody over the age of 35 here? Did the animals get them all?