Older Than Pyramids

This is a creatively transcribed version of the tour speech by Brewarrina Aboriginal Cultural Museum Chairman, Bradley Hardy, as he leads visitors through the exhibits and history of the Fish Traps at Brewarrina, outback New South Wales. The Fish Traps are one of the oldest human-made structures on the planet and Bradley's discourse ranges effortlessly from palaeontology, geology, design culture, theology and oral history through to politics. The transcription protocols, which aim to maintain far more of the distinct diction and syntax of speech than typical transcription practices allow were developed in the course of "We Come from the Past: Orality, Indigeneity and the Flow of Culture," which was funded by the UK AHRC’s Imagining Futures Through Un/Archived Pasts network over 2022-24 and has lead to 9 Indigenous-authored publications to date in scholarly and popular literary journals in Australia, North America and Europe.