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by guidedlight 993 days ago
Indigenous Australians are strongly culturally linked to the land. They weren’t a sea faring people, unlike the Polynesians.

They did have boats (dugouts), but they weren’t suited for the ocean.

1 comments

Bark canoes are not dugouts

https://australian.museum/learn/cultures/atsi-collection/cul...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Canoes

Also indigenous to the Sahul

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_Strait_Islanders

who lived on islands and travelled between PNG and Queensland, Australia but didn't venture south past the Great Barrier Reef and to New ZEaland - but did have the boats and seafaring skills.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makassar_people

who lived in (modern) Indonesia but routinely traded and fished between Northern Australia and China

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trepanging

again, they never (to current knowledge) travelled around and past the Great Barrier Reef.

Sounds like largely coastal navigation, with some longer hops, a pretty different beast from the open water austronesian (/ Melanesian / Polynesian) navigation.