native title

Aboriginal occupation of Australia Archaeologists and prehistorians have dated the presence of Aboriginal people in Australia back about 50,000 years. It has been estimated that between 300,000 and 750,000 Aboriginal people were living in Australian in 1788. Each group had spiritual and economic links with particular areas of land. These groups had well defined rules which regulated the relationships of people within each group and the ways in which neighbouring groups or strangers interacted. In 1971, Blackburn J decided that …

…title to any parcel of the waste lands of the Crown is extinguished, whether by the Crown or by the relevant clan or group, the Crown becomes the absolute beneficial owner of the land. Subject to the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), at least in the absence of clear and unambiguous statutory provisions to the contrary, extinguishment of native title by inconsistent grant does not give rise to a claim for compensatory damages.