Why do Aboriginal & Torres Strait people trade?
- To improve their standard of living.
- To obtain necessary items that they did not have or could not find in their country.
- To become exposed to new ideas.
Trade routes
- Trade routes linked Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander communities.
- Trade routes existed all across Australia.
- Some of these routes are long and complex (thousands of kms)
- The trade routes often followed natural resources such as rivers.
How it works
- Individual people did not necessarily travel the entire distance along a trade route.
- Goods, stories and ideas might be carried by a trader to a community centre and then be exchanged for other items.
- These goods and other things might be taken by another trader to another centre and passed onto another community.
Goods that they used to trade
Before European settlement, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples produced many items to trade, things they produced or collected depending on their location, including:
Exchanges in Technologies and Ideas
- Trade was seen as a way to exchange and share resources.
- It was also a method of passing on traditions and knowledge by word of mouth.
- They had a vast knowledge of the world in which they lived, far beyond their direct locality.