BEFORE MOBILES
Social media that pre-dates the internet
WORDS KATE ROBERTSON
BEFORE MOBILES
Social media that pre-dates the internet
WORDS KATE ROBERTSON
Think your mobile network is impressive? Aboriginal people developed communication systems that could send messages across the entire continent without a single cell tower or satellite. For over 65,000 years, sophisticated networks of sound, dance, smoke, fire, and symbols connected communities across Australia's vast landscapes, creating a national communication system.
From carved message sticks that carried complex diplomatic information to secret dialects known only by Elders, these communication methods had more in-built privacy and reliability than your average mobile reception. No dropped calls, no data limits, no battery anxiety — just ingenious methods that allowed Australia’s diverse Aboriginal nations to communicate across impossible distances.
Low tech, high impact bullroarers.
WARNING SIGNALS
When Taribelang Bunda women and children heard a terrifying roar echo across their Country around Bundaberg in Queensland, they knew to stay well away. The eerie sound, created by bullroarers, served to scare people away from sites where men were undergoing initiation.
Bullroarers consist of a piece of wood tied with kangaroo sinew or the string fibre from a Moreton Bay fig tree. When swung in a large arch, the wind catches the carved wood to create a sound that can travel 20-plus kilometres. When initiation ceremonies were taking place, two men would sound large bullroarers at the same time to magnify the sound.
Unlike other tribes that restricted the use of bullroarers to men, women in the matriarchal Taribelang tribe were allowed to sound smaller ones.
Taribelang Bunda Cultural Tours Guide Waszanna Reed says, ‘We would sound it when we were trying to communicate with family or to call children home. We would have known the difference in the sound between the men's initiation and when it was just a mum communicating with their child.’
Mobile prototype
Taribelang Bunda also communicated with other clans across thousands of kilometres by using message sticks — pieces of wood, 10 – 20cm long, carved with symbols or motifs.
Whilst Aboriginal Australia is made up of hundreds of different tribes, speaking hundreds of languages and even more dialects, all used message sticks and shared universal symbols, Wasi says.
The message sticks would be delivered by two unarmed men, who would stop at tribal boundaries to wait to be welcomed to the other tribe's Country. Rather than ringing a doorbell, they would sound a bullroarer and light a fire to announce their arrival.
‘When the neighbouring tribe heard the bullroarer, they would walk towards the smoke to collect those messengers and take them to their Elders,‘ Wasi says.
This process would be repeated multiple times at multiple tribal boundaries until the message stick was delivered to the intended recipient.
Trunk calls
Further north, in the Daintree, the Kuku Yalanji made the original trunk calls by knocking on trees —turning the rainforest into a giant communication network.
‘The buttresses of some trees makes a sound so loud that it tells you somebody coming, or somebody got hurt, or lost. There's a certain way to tap. Anyone can do it...but you've got to know how,' says Roy Gibson, the visionary behind the Mossman Gorge Cultural Centre.
‘The trees that make the best sound are the buttress trees – you can find them on every walking track in the Daintree.’
‘A lot of them are fruit trees – like the Quandong, Daintree nut trees or Daintree Milky Pine – they all have these big buttress roots.’
Smoke signals
Fire has long been a communication tool for Aboriginal people. In the early 1800s, the Palawa people of Tasmania / lutruwita would light fires on wukalina / Mt William, when they spotted sealers sailing the waters of larapuna / Bay of Fires.
The smoke would alert women and children to move away from the coast to avoid being kidnapped by the sealers. Thankfully, the fires now have a much more joyful purpose. ‘During Christmas time we light what we call the "Santa Claus fires" from the very top down to the last little fire at the bottom of the hill, and all of us kids had to be in bed before that fire goes out, otherwise Santa Claus wouldn't come to us,’ laughs Palawa woman Carleeta Thomas, who guides guests on the four-day wukalina Walk experience.
Experience low-tech, high-impact communication methods on these tours:
Taribelang Bunda, Southeast Queensland
Taribelang Bunda Cultural Tours
On this half-day immersive tour, you’ll have the opportunity to sound a bullroarer and take home the world’s original mobile – a message stick, carved with symbols you will have learned to decode.
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow Tour | Adult from AU$99
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