Our Heritage

To gain recognition as Tasmanian Aboriginals, today’s community has had to endure many hardships to be recognised as a race of people. Today, the Tasmanian Aboriginal community is being recognised as the appropriate people to manage the land, Aboriginal sites, artefacts and knowledge of their past.

Statement of Apology, unanimously supported by the Tasmanian Parliament, 13 August 1997.

Following are some organisations important in maintaining Aboriginal heritage.

The Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania (ALCT) was established 1995 by the Ray Groom Liberal Government to act as custodian of the 12 parcels of land on behalf of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community;

Tasmanian Aboriginal Land and Sea Council (TALC) is committed to the preservation of Aboriginal Culture and Heritage. It is also responsible for dealing with a variety of land management issues within Tasmania. TALC, in conjunction with the Aboriginal Heritage Office at the Department of Tourism, Arts and the Environment, helps preserve and manage Aboriginal sites around Tasmania.

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC) is committed to repatriating Tasmanian Aboriginal artefacts and human remains held in museums and private collections around the world. Cultural retrieval is the recollection, recording and practice of past traditions - language, ceremonies, stories and crafts. The TAC works hard on behalf of the community to gather information about past practices and encourages people to learn and maintain the old skills.

Download the Our Heritage story panel.

Twelve thousand years ago the sea level was rising as the world’s most recent period of global glaciation eased. The land mass now known as Tasmania was cut off and the Aboriginal people living here were isolated. They shared many traits with Australian mainland Aboriginal people but also developed physically and culturally into a distinctive population.

• See a map of Tasmania showing the drowning of the Bassian Plain 14,000 years ago, which isolated Tasmania.
• A map showing the boundaries of tribal areas at the time of European contact.

Download the Tasmanian History story panel.

The Tasmanians were hunters and gatherers. They made tools and containers from wood, bone, stone, seaweed, bark, grass and sinew. They managed their environment carefully, moving around their country to harvest seasonal food resources and using fire to maintain grasslands which supported an abundance of wallabies and kangaroos.

Coastal people relied on the sea for much of their diet. Scale fish were eaten in the distant past but apparently not since about 3,500 years ago; however, the women collected abalone, oysters, mussels and other shellfish. The remains of these make up enormous middens all around Tasmania’s coastline.

The Tasmanians made bark canoes to travel to offshore islands to harvest muttonbirds and seals during summer and autumn. The people camped in family groups, several of which formed a band, the land-holding group in Tasmanian society. Several bands spoke the same language and there were nine language groups / tribes in Tasmania at the time of European contact. Bands with reciprocal arrangements intermarried and shared resources.

The Tasmanians had totems and taboos. Through stories and songs they passed on knowledge of how their world, the animals, plants and people were created. They had knowledge of astronomy, and stone engravings in sites along the west coast are thought to be important symbols of the Tasmanians’ religious beliefs. The people used ochres and charcoal as pigments for body decoration and bark art inside their dwellings. The men dressed their hair with ochre and both women and men wore necklaces of shells and animal and plant fibres.

Moihernee and the Creation of Parlevar

Parlevar was the first Aborigine. To make him, Moihernee took some earth up to the sky and fashioned a man who had a tail like a kangaroo and legs without knee joints. This meant that Parlevar could not lie down and had to sleep standing up. Dromerdeener, the great star spirit, saw this and decided to help Parlevar. He cut off his tail, cured the wound by rubbing grease on it, and made knee joints for Parlevar. When Parlevar sat down for the first time he said, Nyrerae - it is good.

Parlevar stayed in the sky for a very long time. Eventually he came to the land by walking down Laway Teeney - the sky road, or Milky Way. Later Moihernee and Dromerdeener quarrelled. Moihernee was forced to leave the sky and came to live on the land near Louisa Bay in south-west Tasmania. There he fought with many evil spirits who lived in the ground at Toogee Low - the land near Port Davey. Moihernee’s wife followed him and went to live in the sea. Their many children came down from the sky in the rain.

When Moihernee died he went to Krib-biggerer - the land near Cox Bight. There he was turned into a large rock that stands majestically on a point of land near the sea.