Why Australia’s new Aboriginal history tourism offerings are pretty special
- From beautiful spectacles to horrifying tales, Australia’s new experiences tied to Aboriginal history stand out among the fresh ‘offerings’ awaiting visitors
- Chinese tourists are still sorely missed in Australia, but visitors from other markets, especially India, are returning to the Land Down Under in droves
Destinations Known was in Queensland, Australia recently for ATE23, the first full, in-the-flesh Australian Tourism Exchange trade show since Covid-19. And boy was the mood upbeat!
The Gold Coast rolled out the red carpet for 2,000-plus vendors of services, representatives of hotels and resorts, tourism officials, and travel media. Welcoming speeches were made with big grins – after the now obligatory “acknowledgements of country”, of course.
Australia has done a great deal of soul-searching and as well as efforts to bestow Aboriginal as well as English place names on prominent sites, the government advises that an acknowledgement of country should be delivered as part of welcomes and housekeeping at meetings and events, in recognition of the fact Indigenous people were violently robbed of their land by British invaders from the late 18th century onwards.
“I begin today by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we gather, and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging”, is the suggested structure of such statements.
On the Gold Coast, it was repeated many times and the Kombumerri people and speakers of the Yugambeh language were sometimes named specifically.