Dreaming tracks

The first 'travellers' across the country were the creation spirits of the Aboriginal people. These spirits laid down the ‘Dreaming tracks’. These tracks were recognised by the humans they created from certain landmarks along the way, and their routes were remembered and passed on through the generations by songs and stories. They were often ‘highways’ linking important ceremonial sites across the country and allowing safe passage from one group’s territory to another’s.

The humans created their own network of minor local tracks in their own territories, linking waterholes, leading to hunting or gathering rounds and to campsites.

The explorers’ journals and maps provide the first documented evidence of these tracks. The explorers often followed the tracks with the assistance of their Aboriginal guides.

Old maps of the Mongers Lake to Lake Moore area reveal a meandering network of tracks linking wells, rockholes and soaks within a day’s walk of each other. Initially ‘native tracks’, they became the pathways by which pioneering shepherds, sandalwooders, miners and officials gained access to this area and avoided the barriers of the salt lake chains and dense shrublands.