Aquaculture: Budj Bim cultural landscape, Australia

Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, located in the southeastern part of mainland Australia, is one of the world’s most extensive and oldest aquaculture systems. Since the 1970s, the Gunditjmara have worked with archaeologists to record and map numerous kooyang trapping and associated aquaculture facilities across the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape. The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape contains attributes and encompasses values of Gunditjmara aquaculture that are the product of a series of interrelated and interdependent cultural and environmental systems. The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape is centred on a lava flow that was the result of dramatic volcanic eruptions that last occurred more than 30,000 years ago. Over the past 40 years, the lands containing the largest aquaculture complexes within the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape have been acquired by or returned to the Gunditjmara. The Budj Bim Cultural Landscape is central to the story of the Gunditjmara.