The Mangatharra Road: a documentary-film history of first Australian trade

This ARC Future Fellowship project aims to change our understanding of Australian pre-colonial isolation by demonstrating Indigenous Australia's connection to South-East Asian cultural and trading networks. This project, re-enacting and documenting profound and centuries-old relationships between Indigenous Australia and Indonesia, will produce a series of films that will demonstrate this trading connection as a cultural route of World Heritage Status akin to other major trading routes such as the ‘Silk Road’. The project will record a collaborative, cross-cultural, documentary history of Australia’s very first international trading relationship, and produce insights into regional history with significant implications for understanding our present.