In the years following British settlement in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, aboriginal

Australian Aborigines

Australian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...

 trackers or black trackers, as they became known, were enlisted by settlers to assist them in navigating their way through the Australian landscape. The trackers' hunter-gatherer

Hunter-gatherer

A hunter-gatherer or forage society is one in which most or all food is obtained from wild plants and animals, in contrast to agricultural societies which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was the ancestral subsistence mode of Homo, and all modern humans were...

 lifestyle gave rise to excellent tracking skills which were advantageous to settlers in assisting them in finding food and water and locating missing persons or capturing bushrangers.

The first recorded employment of the services of Aboriginal trackers in Australia was in 1834, near Fremantle, Western Australia

Fremantle, Western Australia

Fremantle is a city in Western Australia, located at the mouth of the Swan River. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle was the first area settled by the Swan River colonists in 1829...

, when two trackers named Mogo and Mollydobbin tracked a missing five-year-old boy for over ten hours through the rough Australian bush. Another notable early event occurred in 1864 when Duff children Jane (7), Isaac (9) and Frank (4) Duff, lost for nine days in Wimmera

Wimmera

The Wimmera is a region in the west of the Australian state of Victoria.It covers the dryland farming area south of the range of Mallee scrub, east of the South Australia border and north of the Great Dividing Range...

, were found by aboriginal tracker 'King Richard

Dick-a-Dick

Dick-a-Dick was an Australian Aboriginal tracker and cricketer, a Wotjobaluk man of the people who spoke the Wergaia language in the Wimmera region of western Victoria, Australia...

'.

Tracking

When asked how he tracked, Mitamirri, a famous tracker of the early 20th century, said "I never bend down low, just walk slow round and round until I see more."

In 1845 Edward Stone Parker

Edward Stone Parker

Edward Stone Parker was a Methodist preacher and assistant Protector of Aborigines in the Aboriginal Protectorate established in the Port Philip District of colonial New South Wales under George Augustus Robinson in 1838...

 the Assistant Protector of Aborigines

Protector of Aborigines

The role of Protectors of Aborigines resulted from a recommendation of the report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Aborigines . On 31 January 1838, Lord Glenelg, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies sent Governor Gipps the report.The report recommended that Protectors of...

 based at the Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate Station at Franklinford

Franklinford, Victoria

Franklinford is a small community in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia, located in the Shire of Hepburn. It was the site chosen by Edward Stone Parker to build the Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate station at Franklinford in January 1841 which was an important focus of the Dja Dja Wurrung...

, wrote a letter to the Chief Protector reporting on the murder of a native at Joyce's Station (near Newstead). No witness could be found to the murder but the footprints of five men were tracked by the Jajowurrong

Dja Dja Wurrung

Dja Dja Wurrung, also known as the Jaara people and Loddon River tribe, is a native Aboriginal tribe which occupied the watersheds of the Loddon and Avoca Rivers in the Bendigo region of central Victoria, Australia. They were part of the Kulin alliance of tribes. There were 16 clans, which adhered...

 to open country south of Mount Macedon (Sunbury region). The trackers there met with another man attached to the Loddon Protectorate Station who was on his return from Melbourne. He told the trackers he had met with the group they were tracking and was able to give a description of them.

Native Police

The Port Phillip Native Police Corps was established in Victoria in 1842 and employed aboriginal trackers to carry out duties which included searching for missing persons, carrying messages, and escorting dignitaries through unfamiliar territory. During the goldrush era, they were also used to patrol goldfields and search for escaped prisoners. They were provided with uniforms, firearms, food rations and a rather dubious salary.

In 1879 the services of a group of Queensland black police were requested to help track the Kelly

Ned Kelly

Edward "Ned" Kelly was an Irish Australian bushranger. He is considered by some to be merely a cold-blooded cop killer — others, however, consider him to be a folk hero and symbol of Irish Australian resistance against the Anglo-Australian ruling class.Kelly was born in Victoria to an Irish...

 gang which were on the run from the Victorian police. Their use was agreed and a party of six native troopers, with a white officer (Sub-Inspector Stanhope O'Conner) reached Benalla

Benalla, Victoria

Benalla is a city of just over 9,000 people located just off the Hume Freeway in north-eastern Victoria, Australia, about southwest of Wangaratta. Its Local Government Area is the Rural City of Benalla.- Overview :...

 about March 1879.

A similar force was established in New South Wales in 1848 by Governor Charles Fitzroy

Charles Augustus FitzRoy

Sir Charles Augustus FitzRoy, KCH, KCB was a British military officer, politician and member of the aristocracy, who held governorships in several British colonies during the 19th century.-Family and peerage:...

 and in 1859, Queensland, now a separate colony, took control of the force until 1900.

Recent and present day use

In 1941, the Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit was established to patrol the North Australian coastline for Japanese landings and infiltration, and was primarily composed of Aboriginal soldiers. The 2/1st North Australia Observer Unit

2/1st North Australia Observer Unit

The 2/1st North Australia Observer Unit was an Australian Army reconnaissance unit of World War II. 2/1 NAOU was formed in May 1942 to patrol remote areas of northern Australia and provide warning to the Northern Territory Force of any Japanese landings...

 ("Nackaroos") performed a similar role, though Aboriginals were a minority in the unit, serving as labourers and trackers.

In the present day Australian Army, the Regional Force Surveillance Units

Regional Force Surveillance Units

"RFSU" redirects here. For the Swedish organization, see Swedish Association for Sexuality EducationThe Regional Force Surveillance Units are specialised infantry units of the Australian Army Reserve responsible for patrolling northern Australia...

 can be seen as a spiritual descendant of the Tracker legacy.

Notable Aboriginal trackers

• Dick-a-Dick
  Dick-a-Dick
  Dick-a-Dick was an Australian Aboriginal tracker and cricketer, a Wotjobaluk man of the people who spoke the Wergaia language in the Wimmera region of western Victoria, Australia...
  
  
• Jimmy Governor
  Jimmy Governor
  Jimmy Governor was one of the Governor brothers, two Indigenous Australian men who committed a series of murders in the Central West region of New South Wales around the turn of the twentieth century....
  
  
• Jimmy James
  Jimmy James (tracker)
  Jimmy James OAM was an Aboriginal Australian and member of the Pitjantjatjara people, who was best known as an Aboriginal tracker who helped South Australian Police in tracking criminals over a forty year period....
  
  
• Tommy Windich
  Tommy Windich
  Tommy Windich was an Indigenous Australian member of a number of exploring expeditions in Western Australia in the 1860s and 1870s.Tommy Windich was born around 1840 near Mount Stirling in Western Australia...
  
  

Aboriginal trackers in books and film

• Australia (2008 film)
  Australia (2008 film)
  Australia is a 2008 epic historical romance film directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. It is the second-highest grossing Australian film of all time, behind Crocodile Dundee. The screenplay was written by Luhrmann and screenwriter Stuart Beattie, with Ronald Harwood...
  
  
• The Last Trackers of the Outback
  The Last Trackers of the Outback
  The Last Trackers of the Outback is a 2007 documentary film about Aboriginal trackers in Australia.The documentary, co-directed by Eric Ellena and Vanessa Escalante, won the Public’s Choice Award 2008 FIFO - Pacific International Documentary Film Festival of Tahiti...
  
  (2007 documentary
  Documentary
  A documentary is a creative work of non-fiction, including:* Documentary film, including television* Radio documentary* Documentary photographyRelated terms include:...
  
   film)
• The Tracker (2002 film)
  The Tracker
  The Tracker is an Australian drama film produced in 2002. It was directed and written by Rolf de Heer. It is a set in 1922 in outback Australia where a racist white colonial policeman used the tracking ability of an Indigenous Australian tracker to find the murderer of a white woman...
  
  
• Rabbit-Proof Fence (film)
  Rabbit-Proof Fence (film)
  Rabbit-Proof Fence is a 2002 Australian drama film directed by Phillip Noyce based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara...
  
  
• A Cry in the Dark
  A Cry in the Dark
  Evil Angels is a 1988 Australian film directed by Fred Schepisi. The screenplay by Schepisi and Robert Caswell is based on John Bryson's 1985 book Evil Angels, the title under which the film was released in Australia...
  
  
• One Night the Moon
  One Night the Moon
  One Night the Moon is a 2001 Australian musical non-feature film starring husband and wife team Paul Kelly, a singer-songwriter, and Kaarin Fairfax, a film and television actress, and their daughter Memphis Kelly. Directed by Rachel Perkins and written by Perkins with John Romeril, it was filmed on...
  
  
• Black Tracker
• Walkabout (novel)
  Walkabout (novel)
  Walkabout is a novel written by James Vance Marshall, first published in 1959. It is about two children who get lost in the Australian Outback and are helped by an Aborigine on his walkabout. A film based on the book came out in 1971, but deviated from the original plot.-Plot summary:The book opens...