Acknowledgement of Country
​I acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which I live, travel, and work, and I pay my deep respects to Elders past and present.
All of the journeys I guide across Australia take place on Aboriginal land.
This continent is not an empty wilderness. It is a cultural landscape that has been known, named, lived in, and cared for for tens of thousands of years.
Long before maps, borders, and modern nations, this land was already held in complex systems of knowledge, law, story, and responsibility. These systems are not relics of the past. They are living traditions that continue today.
When we travel through places like the Kimberley, Central Australia, or the desert heart of this country, we are not just moving through scenery. We are moving through Country.
In Aboriginal understanding, Country is not land as an object. It is land as relationship. It includes the earth, the water, the sky, the plants, the animals, the stories, the people, and the memory of everything that has happened there. Country is not something you own. It is something you belong to, and something you are responsible for.
I acknowledge that these lands were never ceded.
The arrival of Europeans brought immense disruption, dispossession, and trauma to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the effects of which are still felt today. This is not ancient history. It is living history.
At the same time, Aboriginal cultures have shown extraordinary resilience, continuity, and strength. They remain among the oldest living cultures on Earth.
When I guide people through these landscapes, I do so as a visitor.
I do not claim Aboriginal knowledge, stories, or authority. Where we are invited to listen and learn from Indigenous people directly, we do so with respect and humility. Where we are not, we acknowledge that some knowledge is not ours to hold.
My work is grounded in the belief that understanding this continent properly requires understanding both its deep-time geology and its deep-time culture.
To travel through Australia without acknowledging its First Peoples is to only ever see half the story.
Specifically, I would like to acknowledge the language groups and peoples with which I have had personal connections - having learnt from, worked with and/or lived with people from: The Larrakia, Adnyamatana, Gunditjmara, Yolngu, Luritja, Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Arrente, and Yawuru language groups.
I am grateful to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who continue to care for this land, hold its stories, and keep its cultural memory alive.
I encourage everyone who travels with me to do so with respect, curiosity, and an open mind, and to remember that we are guests here.
Always.