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Experience Tasmanian Aboriginal Culture and History

  • palawa kipli. Image Credit: Samuel Shelley

Tasmanian Aboriginal culture boasts a rich heritage spanning over 42,000 years.

In Southern Tasmania, you can explore sites and attend insightful events that offer a deep dive into the vibrant history and enduring traditions of the Aboriginal people. Discover the past and present of this ancient culture through immersive experiences that bring their stories to life.

Blak Led Tours Tasmania:

Connecting with Tasmanian Aboriginal Culture Through Storytelling

Blak Led Tours Tasmania offers an immersive and transformative way to experience lutruwita/Tasmania through the eyes and voices of the palawa people, the island’s First Nations community. These tours provide a unique opportunity to connect with Aboriginal history, culture, and ongoing presence in southern Tasmania, with a range of fully guided, self-guided, and free options available to suit all visitors.

Blak Led Tours
Blak Led Tours

Takara nipaluna / Walking Hobart

The flagship tour, takara nipaluna, is a powerful journey through nipaluna (Hobart), offering a palawa perspective on the city’s layered history. Led by Tasmanian Aboriginal guides, the tour retraces the steps of the Aboriginal resistance members in 1832, who walked through the city to negotiate an end to the Black War. This deeply moving, historical storytelling experience brings to light the often-hidden truths of the city’s past, while revealing the resilience and continuity of palawa culture today.

Developed by palawa and Warlpiri woman Nunami Sculthorpe-Green, takara nipaluna blends historical narrative with a dramatic style, making it unlike any other tour in Tasmania. As the only Aboriginal-led tour of Hobart, it offers an essential perspective for anyone seeking to understand the complex layers of history and identity that shape the city.

Takara nipaluna

Kunanyi Connection

Another enriching experience offered by Blak Led Tours is the Kunanyi Connection. This gentle, reflective walk on kunanyi/Mount Wellington invites participants to slow down and appreciate the cultural significance of the mountain. Led by Nunami, this tour is designed to foster a deep sense of connection to kunanyi as an enduring cultural landscape for the palawa people.

The walk provides insight into the ways the palawa community continues to connect with and care for this place, offering guests the chance to learn about the natural cycles, resources, and landmarks that define kunanyi. 

kunanyi Connection
Peppermint Gum, kunanyi/Mt Wellington. Image Credit: Pete Mellows
Peppermint Gum, kunanyi/Mt Wellington. Image Credit: Pete Mellows
nipaluna / Hobart. Image Credit: @darrenwrightphotos
nipaluna / Hobart. Image Credit: @darrenwrightphotos

akapawa palawa nipaluna-ti

For those seeking a self-guided exploration, Blak Led Tours offers the lakapawa palawa nipaluna-ti booklet. This guide provides a map and directions to key Aboriginal artworks in Hobart, allowing visitors to engage with the city’s public spaces through an Aboriginal cultural lens. Each artwork tells its own story, and the booklet shares the narratives and significance behind these pieces, created by Tasmanian Aboriginal artists.

The lakapawa palawa nipaluna-ti booklet can be picked up at various locations around Hobart or downloaded for free online, offering yet another way to connect with Aboriginal culture at your own pace.

lakapawa palawa nipaluna-ti

Blak Led Tours Tasmania is at the forefront of sharing palawa stories, ensuring that these histories and cultures are visible, respected, and understood by all who visit lutruwita/Tasmania. Whether through walking the streets of nipaluna, exploring kunanyi, or engaging with public artworks, each tour and resource encourages a deeper connection with the island’s First Nations heritage, offering insights that will resonate long after the experience ends.

Blak Led Tours Tasmania

Palawa Kipli:

Tasmanian Aboriginal Bush Tucker and Native Food Experiences

Palawa Kipli offers an authentic exploration of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture through native food and bush tucker experiences. Operated by Aboriginal people on Aboriginal land, Palawa Kipli is dedicated to reconnecting the palawa community with traditional food practices, contributing to cultural revival and continuity.

Their mission extends beyond food, fostering engagement with Tasmania’s rich cultural landscapes while supporting employment and cultural land management practices for Tasmanian Aboriginal people.

Palawa Kipli
alawa kipli, kipli takara tours. Image Credit: Samuel Shelley
alawa kipli, kipli takara tours. Image Credit: Samuel Shelley
alawa kipli, kipli takara tours. Image Credit: Samuel Shelley
alawa kipli, kipli takara tours. Image Credit: Samuel Shelley

Kipli Takara Piyura Kitina-ta: Bush Foods Walk at Risdon Cove

The kipli takara bush tucker tour invites visitors to walk through the culturally significant landscape of piyura kitina/Risdon Cove. This 90-minute guided walk offers an opportunity to explore the natural pantry that has sustained the palawa people for thousands of years.

Located on land returned to Tasmanian Aboriginal ownership in 1995, piyura kitina is a place of deep historical and cultural significance. Guided by palawa hosts, guests will learn about the traditional and contemporary significance of the landscape, while sampling the seasonal bush foods found along the track. 

The kipli takara experience concludes with a tasting of native foods prepared by Palawa Kipli, a Tasmanian Aboriginal-owned catering business that specialises in native ingredients. This tasting introduces guests to the timeless flavours of lutruwita, offering a sensory connection to the island’s cultural heritage.

kipli takara piyura kitina-ta
alawa kipli, kipli takara tours. Image Credit: Samuel Shelley
alawa kipli, kipli takara tours. Image Credit: Samuel Shelley
alawa kipli, kipli takara tours. Image Credit: Samuel Shelley
alawa kipli, kipli takara tours. Image Credit: Samuel Shelley
alawa kipli, kipli takara tours. Image Credit: Samuel Shelley
alawa kipli, kipli takara tours. Image Credit: Samuel Shelley

The Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery

The Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery (TMAG) is a good place to start if you are interested in learning about Tasmanian Aboriginal culture and heritage and the Tasmanian Aboriginal people living in Tasmania today.

The newly-refreshed ningina tunapri (‘to give knowledge and understanding’) gallery is a permanent exhibition in the Henry Hunter Galleries on Level 1.

The exhibition offers a rich and enlightening experience, exploring the journey of Tasmanian Aboriginal people and celebrating all Tasmanian Aboriginal generations.

ningina tunapri
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

Watch an introductory video to the ningina tunapri exhibition for teachers

This video gives teachers a brief overview of the ningina tunapri Tasmanian Aboriginal gallery at TMAG and shows them how they and their students can get the best out of their self-guided experience.

ningina tunapri

Our land: parrawa, parrawa! Go away!

It is a permanent exhibition in the Bond Store Galleries on Level 2.

This immersive exhibition tells the story of Aboriginal people and colonists following the invasion of lutruwita, now called Tasmania, focusing on the Black War.

Go on an immersive journey through this dark period of history, with objects, contemporary historical accounts and specially commissioned films all helping to bring the story to life.

parrawa, parrawa! Go away!
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
Taypani Community Engagement
Taypani Community Engagement

Taypani Community Engagement

Following on from the exhibition taypani milaythina-tu: Return to Country, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery invites the Tasmanian Aboriginal community to visit, view and engage with the Ancestral cultural belongings that have returned to lutruwita on loan from nine overseas institutions and Museums Victoria, until August 2026.

The taypani milaythina-tu: Return to Country exhibition presented the works of 20 Tasmanian Aboriginal artists responding to relationships between Community, Country and Ancestral objects, including those that have come home.

If you would like to make an arrangement to visit the museum and see the ancestral belongings, please contact tmagmail@tmag.tas.gov.au.

Please note that this program is exclusively for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Community.

Tasmania’s National Parks

The cultural heritage of Tasmanian Aboriginal people is preserved within the diverse landscape of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Aboriginal people have lived in, used, managed and modified the landscape for more than 42,000 years. Aboriginal cultural heritage sites provide further insight into this deep connection with the land.

Cultural values such as story, song, dance, language, kinship, custom, ceremony and ritual are often associated with physical places or features within the landscape. 

The creation story associated with Louisa Bay and Cox Bight is presented to the public in the form of a 1.2km interpretative walking trail at Melaleuca known as the Needwonee Walk. The sculptural installations along the track are made from natural materials and are, as such, living and changing. 

Melaleuca is located within the remote Southwest National Park and is accessible via light plane, seaplane, helicopter, chartered boat, yacht, or on foot on the challenging South Coast Track (6–8 days / 85km one way).

Needwonee Walk Melaleuca
Needwonee Walk Melaleuca

The Elizabeth Street Mall

When in the city, keep an eye out for Feeling the Country, a contemporary artwork created by Michelle Maynard and installed in the Elizabeth Street Mall.

The artwork aims to deepen awareness of Aboriginal culture in Hobart, as well as acknowledge the cultural and historic significance of the site for Tasmanian Aboriginal and the Mouheneener people.

The artwork is inspired by history and the natural environment, touching on universal questions of place, connectivity and belonging.

The vibrant imagery spans the walls of the Elizabeth Mall Information Hub.

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We acknowledge the Tasmanian Aboriginal people and their enduring custodianship of lutruwita / Tasmania. We honour 40,000 years of uninterrupted care, protection and belonging to these islands, before the invasion and colonisation of European settlement. As a destination that welcomes visitors to these lands, we acknowledge our responsibility to represent to our visitors, Tasmania’s deep and complex history, fully, respectfully and truthfully.

We acknowledge the Aboriginal people who continue to care for this country today. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present. We honour their stories, songs, art, and culture, and their aspirations for the future of their people and these lands. We respectfully ask that tourism be a part of that future.

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Tasmanian Travel and Information Centre
16-20 Davey St, Hobart TAS 7000

(03) 6238 4222
bookings@hobarttravelcentre.com.au
hobarttravelcentre.com.au

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