I am acutely aware while visiting other places that I am in the home of the ancestors whose stories since ancient times are preserved in the land, seas, skies and atmosphere.

These stories of country live inside us and are ‘the extraordinary literacy of place’, of ancient land titles, and are similar to understanding the old stories of places that the British landscape writer Robert Macfarlane might describe as being the ‘intricate stories to map the landscape’. Our ancient library covers the continent and is kept in deep memory and cultural practices by the traditional Aboriginal landowners. Some of these stories travel across the country with law boundaries that are far older than the Australian state or territory borders that cut across these old boundaries. This includes those story lines that extend from Victoria to northern Australia or, for instance, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Central Australia and beyond. Most of the old stories have deep cultural meaning and are sacred stories, but I would like to give you an outline of significant stories in just a few of the places I visited in 2018.