Everywhere we went there were wonderful aboriginal museums and art galleries. It almost seemed to be possible to spend an entire holiday in Aus just studying the pre European cultures.

In Perth the museum seemed to be very biased towards the aboriginals and against the colonials who took their lands. Whilst this seems schizophrenic, since the Australians are not proposing to knock down their cities and give back the lands, the key may be that the colonials are the British, not the Australians themselves!

In any case it's a bit late to put the clock back. The aboriginal life style seems to have been swamped. Putting the clock back would involve the destruction of almost the entire built fabric of Australia, since the Australians live in the most fertile, managable areas, exactly where the majority of aboriginals used to live.

We met a homicidal tour bus driver called Chris. He used to be a teacher and had spent several years teaching aboriginal children. He told us several stories about the children. He remembered them coming into school and then being supplied with clothes they would wear until it was time to go home, when they would take them all off again. They would also be given food for lunch which they would discard or hide, preferring to find their own food in the landscape.

Almost every story , or joke, Chris told ended with a reported death. For example, he told us he thought it would be a good idea to run over school inspectors! But there were no deaths in his stories about aboriginal children. Instead he grieved about the fact that political correctness had prevented him teaching in the interests of the children (or what he believed was the interests of the children).

We also took a Captain Cook Cruise called the Aboriginal Heritage Tour. This tour led by aboriginal guides, introduced us to the profligate wonders of the Australian bush. It seems to be possible to come across native plants that will satisfy almost all needs, on a short walk. We had a go at creating fire (a failure) and discovered that the Nyoongar never used didgeridoos. They used to make music by hitting small musical sticks together. Even so, all the local aboriginal art shops were full of didgeridoos.

The Nyoongar were the local aboriginal people in the swan valley area, Perth. According to the story the Nyoongar could talk to animals, or the magical creatures that populate their tales.

What they could not do was talk to other aboriginal peoples. This was partly because many of those peoples live thousands of kilometres away and they had no occasion to meet them, and partly because each local group had its own, distinct language, within which there were many dialects. Today the aboriginals can talk to each other for the first time, in English.

For further information try Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies: www.aiatsis.gov.au