The group of languages comprising several language families and isolates native to Australia and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding Tasmania
Any of the indigenous peoples of Australia and Tasmania that arrived 40,000-60,000 years ago. At one time there were as many as 500 language-named, territorially anchored groups (tribes) of indigenous Australians. They subsisted as hunters and gatherers. They formed groups along the male line (patrilineal descent), and their lives were centred around a watering place settled by the group's ancestors. The men were divided into lodges and were custodians of the mythology, ritual, sites, and symbols evoked in the Dreaming. The Aboriginal population, estimated to be 300,000-1,000,000 when European colonization began in the late 18th century, was devastated by introduced diseases and by the bloody 19th-century policy of "pacification by force." In 1996 they were estimated to number about 386,000. Most aspects of their traditional culture have been severely modified. All the Aboriginal peoples have had some contact with modern Australian society, and all are now Australian citizens
Group of perhaps 250 languages spoken by the one to two million native inhabitants of Australia before the beginning of European conquest in 1788. More than half are now extinct; of the remainder, only about 20, mostly in the North Territory and northern Western Australia, remain in active use by both adults and children. Most Australian languages belong to a single superfamily, Pama-Nyungan, and the remainder, a very diverse group of languages spoken in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and parts of the North Territory, may be remotely akin to Pama-Nyungan