Billy Griffiths

We hear a lot about the extraordinary Brewarrina fishtraps.

We hear a lot about the extraordinary World Heritage listed fishtraps at Budjumbim in Guntijmara country in Western Victoria.

But they're not the only examples of these extraordinary structures.

What we're talking about are, in the main, intertidal stone walled fish traps.

So these are walls built to enclose areas of the intertidal zone to control the movements of marine resources.

And in some areas, on some countries, and I'm thinking here particularly in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria, the Wellesley Islands and adjacent mainland, so that's the country of Kaida, Lardal, Yunkul and Gangalida people,

We've been working with the ranger groups there and senior traditional owners to document all of those sites from satellite data.

And a PhD student, Lucy Hughes, has done an extraordinary amount of work here.

We've recorded over 500 individual fish traps.

But that's not the most extraordinary part of it, just the number.

It's the fact that those fish traps constitute more than 55 linear kilometres of stone wall.

which can be more than a metre in height, and the individual fish traps can be almost up to a kilometre long.

So what you're looking at is an integrated system of paddocks in the intertidal zone, which constitute an aquaculture system.

These are enclosing other bigger structures built by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and they're designed

basically for producing marine resources.

And I think a lot of people wouldn't be aware of these structures.

And they're very common in Torres Strait as well and parts of Cape York Peninsula.

But fish traps are known all around the Australian coastline, rarely in the types of densities we see in the northeast though.

What's the answer?

Who made the wheel, the standard, the peak of technological superiority?