The Voices of Our Ancestors Trivia Quiz

Answer: River Torrens

Before the city of Adelaide was built, there was an open grassy plain. The Kaurna people called it Tarntanya, which means 'red kangaroo place'. They were experts at managing the land and used the Karrawirra Pari (River Torrens) for fresh water and fishing.

Their name most likely comes from a neighbouring group - it translates to 'man' or 'people' in the language of the the Ramindjeri and Ngarrindjeri.

Answer: Ned Kelly

The Kulin nation was made up of five language groups, including the Woiwurrung (Wurundjeri) people. William Barak was a famous leader of the Wurundjeri clan at the close of the 19th century. As white settlers expanded their farms, the Aboriginal groups were forced from their land. Barak was a spokesperson for his people. Even before he became a clan leader, he worked to protect the rights of Aboriginal people and their land.

As a member of the Native Police Corps, Barak tracked missing people and outlaws. He became an experienced tracker and was asked to hunt down fugitives even after he had left the force. His most famous undertaking was to track Ned Kelly and his gang in the Australian bush.

The William Barak Bridge at Birrarung Mar was dedicated to the memory of the man who tried to bring peace between the settlers and Indigenous people.

Answer: Giant caterpillars became the local mountain ranges.

In the Dreaming story of the Arrernte people, the area that surrounded what is now Alice Springs was created by giant caterpillars. The huge creatures became the MacDonnell mountain ranges, sometimes called Tjoritja by the Aboriginal people. The nooks and ridges of the mountains were the bumps and folds of the caterpillars' bodies.

In 2014, some of the landmarks within the MacDonnell mountain ranges were renamed with Arrernte titles. The park became Tjoritja, which was the Arrernte name for the area within the West MacDonnell National Park. The Aboriginal title of Yeperenye for the Emily and Jessie Gaps Nature Park was the name of one of the giant caterpillars in the creation story.

Answer: Canberra

Bogong moths travel southwards during the summer to find cooler climates. They shelter from the heat in crevices in the mountains. Thousands of Ngunnawal people would gather in the summer to collect the moths - a seasonal delicacy. The insects were shaken out of the rocks, then roasted over fires.

Indigenous people had been practising a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the area around Canberra for approximately 20,000 years. When Europeans arrived in the 19th century, their herds of cattle and flocks of sheep trampled the ground and damaged the Aboriginals' natural food sources.

Answer: Larrakia

The land belonging to the Larrakia people stretched east to west from Cox peninsula to the Adelaide river. North to south, it ran from Gunn Point on the coast to Manton Dam, roughly 80 km south. The nation had a close relationship with the sea and used the water to provide food for their community. The Larrakia people held a deep respect for the land, too; a quality that was still evident in the 21st century. Larrakia Rangers were an Aboriginal ranger group who worked with landowners to care for the greater Darwin region.

Inuits are some of the people indigenous to the far north of North America. The Sami people are native to parts of Scandinavia and Russia, and the Ainu people are indigenous to Hokkaido and other parts of Japan.

Answer: kunanyi

The city of Hobart stands there now, but in centuries past, the land was managed by the muwinina people. They employed a mixture of hunting, fishing, and gathering to survive in the Derwent estuary. They also used fire to aid their hunting and to clear vegetation. The mountain they called kunanyi was the backdrop to their country. In 2013, a dual naming policy was introduced and the towering geological feature became known as kunanyi/ Mount Wellington.

In palawa kani, the language of the muwinina people, capital letters are not used.

Answer: Quokka

Rottnest Island is just off the coast of Perth. Quokkas are a small species of wallaby that used to be common on the Australian mainland. Their numbers began to decline around 3,500 years ago when the dingo arrived, and the introduction of foxes in the 19th century reduced their numbers further. The marsupial thrived on Rottnest Island, undisturbed by predators.

Another common Noongar word is 'boodja', meaning country. In 2014, the Noongar language was the vehicle for the first Indigenous Australian Wikipedia page. It began as a project by a team from the University of Western Australia to preserve the language and culture of the region's Aboriginal groups.

The proboscis monkey is endemic to the island of Borneo and the fossa is endemic to Madagascar. The Hawaiian honeycreeper is, as its name suggests, endemic to Hawaii.

Answer: Sydney

The Eora people were incredibly diverse with a range of languages and dialects spoken in a relatively small area. The groups were united in their link to the coast - their livelihoods came from the ocean and rivers. Even as the small town of Sydney grew into a bustling city, the Eora people maintained some of their hunting and fishing grounds.

Some of those places remained culturally significant into the 21st century.

Answer: Yawuru people

In 2006, a Federal Court ruling meant that the Yawuru people became the native title holders of a large portion of land in Western Australian. Yawuru country covers subtropical coasts and inland savannahs. As title holders, they aim to protect threatened species and maintain a balance in the natural world placed in their care. The Indigenous community are connected by a shared cosmology that leads to a shared culture.

Gujarati, Assyrians, and Katuic peoples are all indigenous communities in different parts of Asia.

Answer: Hard Yakka

Indigenous communities often have multiple ways of writing their names because many Aboriginal languages were oral, not written. As the languages started to be recorded, different spellings were used by different writers for the same words. The Yugara people seem to have more written variations than others! The Wikipedia entry listed these spellings: Jagera, Yagarr, Yaggera, Yuggara, Yuggera, Chepara-Yuggara, Chepara-Yugara, Yugarabul, Yuggarapul, and Yugarapul.

Hard Yakka was a clothing company founded in the 1930s. The name came from the Yugara word, 'yakka', meaning 'work'.