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Australia isn’t just home to the oldest living culture on Earth: we also lay claim to an exceptionally rare suite of Indigenous tourism experiences. But incredibly – despite being highly sought after by global travellers – many of these activities are virtually unheard of by most Australians. Here, find five of the little-known activities on offer: just a handful of the vibrant, contemporary and surprising Aboriginal travel experiences found in our backyard.

Gaze at a new map of the night’s skies
There are astronomy tours, and then there are Aboriginal astronomy tours. Turns out, there’s more than one map of the night sky, and learning to look at the universe’s dark patches for meaning, as well as the twinkling stars, is surprisingly revealing. Aboriginal people are believed to be the world’s first astronomers – another fact few have heard – and have long used the stars as navigation tools. Get a new astral view with Wula Gura Nyinda Eco Cultural Adventures in World Heritage-listed Shark Bay.

Spot dinosaur footprints
Dinosaur track marks smatter the ground around Broome, in Western Australia’s Kimberley, yet few Australians know of them, and even fewer have witnessed them up close. It’s astonishing, given scientists have described the area as the Serengeti of the cretaceous period. Get face to face with some of these 130 million-year-old marvels and add another dimension by going with an Aboriginal guide. On the Narlijia Experiences Broome Beach to Bay walking tour, you’ll hear the ancient stories connected to the prints, while also seeing shell middens – eating zones used for tens of thousands of years, where the discarded shellfish remains beam white in the sun.

Go sand dune sliding
Aboriginal life and culture are rarely perceived as also being exhilarating and adventurous. Sand Dune Adventures turn this misconception on its head by putting guests on quad bikes and riding through the longest moving coastal sand dunes in the Southern Hemisphere, just 2.5 hours north of Sydney near Port Stephens. Aboriginal stories are shared while on exclusive Worimi land, inaccessible any other way. Deep connections are shared while gazing over the vast coastline, travelling through bush and sliding over sand.

See Tasmania’s Bay of Fires through Aboriginal eyes
If most Australians were asked why one of Tasmania’s most famous sites is called the Bay of Fires, they wouldn’t know the answer. The Aboriginal connection is barely known, despite the countless postcard images of the glass-clear blue waters and sienna-hued rock tumbles. The name comes from the many fires lit by Aboriginal people along the coastline – the first and lasting impression of an explorer in 1773. Immerse yourself in the history, culture and traditional lands of the palawa people, who call the area larapuna, and follow their forebears’ footsteps on the unforgettable wukalina Walk.

Explore the world’s largest concentration of petroglyphs
You might have heard that rock engravings pepper the Burrup Peninsula in Western Australia’s vast, red Pilbara region. But were you aware they’re estimated to have been etched into some of the hardest stone on Earth some 20,000 to 50,000 years ago? The engravings are an extraordinary time capsule of the Earth’s evolution. Spend aday with Ngurrangga Tours and travel back to before the last ice age, seeing depictions of megafauna that’s long extinct, marine species that arrived after sea levels rose and turned the site into an island, and animal footprints that were used to teach youngsters how to hunt.