Islanders’ deadly inheritance

The wobble walk was an early sign of the Groote Eylandt “sickness” for Bakala. Police officers have been known to mistake the walk for public drunkenness. It wasn’t so long ago that Groote locals with the sickness were mistakenly thrown into paddy wagons, too panicked to slow down and concentrate on their words so they could explain themselves.

Throw a sea cucumber on the barbie: Australia’s trade history really is something to celebrate

There is evidence fishermen from Makassar, on what is now the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, were visiting the coast of what is now Arnhem Land to collect sea cucumbers as early as the mid-1600s to sell to Chinese merchants. The fishermen camped on the beach to boil and dry their caught trepang, and exchanged goods with the local Indigenous tribes.

The state of Australia’s Indigenous languages – and how we can help people speak them more often

In 1788 there were between 300 and 700 Indigenous languages spoken across Australia by millions of people, as shown in anthropologist Norman Tindale’s 1974 map. However in the Australian 2016 Census, only around 160 of these languages were reported as being spoken at home.

Why do so few Aussies speak an Australian language?

Linguistically speaking, Australia is special. With around 250 languages spoken when Australia was first colonised, Australia was one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world. But few people speak our Indigenous languages. As of 2016, only 10% of Australia’s Indigenous population spoke an Indigenous language at home. Most Indigenous languages are now “asleep”, waiting to be woken up by language revivalists.

Teleporting and psychedelic mushrooms: a history of St Nicholas, Santa and his helpers

The original Santa, Saint Nicholas, was a fourth century CE bishop of Myra (in modern Turkey) with a reputation for generosity and wonder-working. St Nicholas became an important figure in eighth century Byzantium before hitting pan-European stardom around the 11th century.

He became a focus not just for religious devotion, but Medieval dramas and popular festivals – some popular enough to be suppressed during the Reformation