Original subtitles

VOICEOVER: We acknowledge the many First Nations across the country

and their elders and knowledge-holders,

who have generously shared their stories

and welcomed us onto their country for this series

and we would like to warn Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers

that the following program may contain

images and voices of deceased persons.

ROB COLLINS: No other survival tool on the planet

begins to compare with the human mind.

With our intelligence, we devise strategies for the future.

We manipulate the environment to suit our needs.

But humans can also destroy the very environment

we rely on for our survival.

In our search for solutions,

we must explore all options.

The knowledge systems created by the first inventors

have sustained my ancestors,

the world's oldest living cultures,

for at least 65,000 years.

But the world we live in today couldn't be any more different.

The survival challenges we face...

..are bigger than ever.

In this episode...

(INDISTINCT CONVERSATION)

..an ancient innovation...

You're looking, probably... Yeah, we've got the fire!

..tackling one of the modern world's greatest problems.

Good fire management essentially halves the emissions from fire.

Half?

Traditional knowledge of Australian plants...

How can you tell what you can't eat?

There's a system.

..helping to create new medicine.

We have got a novel molecule no-one has discovered before.

And was the boomerang...

..the world's first flying machine?

There's so much belief went into this, by my people back home.

So for humanity to survive the next hundred...

..let alone thousands of years into the future,

we're gonna need Indigenous knowledge

and Western science working together.

There's your one for throwing.

There's yours for throwing, there's yours for throwing.

There's yours.

Yeah, that's good.

It's a moment repeated countless times over many thousands of years.

So, your...your shot now.

(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)

Ooh, look out.

The boomerang is Australia's most iconic invention.

A masterstroke of design,

using aerodynamic lift to create heavier-than-air flight

and a shape which returns it to the thrower.

Something we've been doing for thousands and thousands of years,

learning how to throw them,

so that skill is never lost.

Uncle Moogy Sumner is a Ngarrindjeri Elder and boomerang expert.

What I'm gonna do here

is I'm gonna draw the flight pattern onto the boomerang here,

so that when you throw it, it'll come round and catch that wind,

because the wind is pushing down and lifting this up.

The Ngarrindjeri have direct links

to the oldest boomerang ever found in Australia.

A 10,000-year-old marvel of human invention.

The boomerang may be ancient

but today, its unique design

is challenging how we think

about one of the greatest inventions of modern science.

MAN: In 1903, on the plains of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina,

this history began.

Since its beginnings in the early 20th century,

flight has changed the world.

Aviation history is written in a never-fading book of records.

We now jet across the planet without a second thought.

The technology that makes it possible

is based on a single, very special innovation...

..the aerofoil.

The streamlined wing slices through the air,

reducing pressure above it

while generating excess pressure

on the underside,

lifting it upward into the air.

Aerofoils are the design behind the wings of jets,

propellers,

engine blades

and helicopter rotors.

But was the first aerofoil invented just over a century ago...

..or thousands of years earlier,

in Australia?

The curvature we've been able to see

does suggest that there is camber there.

At the University of New South Wales,

Dr Sonya Brown and student Ahmed Mahgoub

are analysing the boomerang's aerodynamics

to determine whether it is, in fact,

the world's first aerofoil.

In an aerofoil, it has some characteristics,

so it's round, the leading edge,

and then it becomes more tipped toward the trailing edge.

A cross-section profile of the boomerang

closely resembles the cross-section of an aerofoil or wing.

But does it fly the same way?

The simulations are done and now we have some interesting results.

Red shows pockets of high pressure

as the boomerang rotates.

At the bottom of the boomerang, we have higher pressure,

which is what generates lift.

The rotating flight profile of the boomerang

reveals its aerodynamic properties.

In the outer section of the boomerang,

it's acting very similar to an aerofoil.

Yes.

Pressure distribution almost looks identical to an aerofoil at the tip.

This is actually an amazing fact,

given that these devices were invented thousands of years ago.

It's clear that ancient boomerangs and modern aircraft

share very similar design characteristics.

Maybe we can go from an inboard to an outboard, then.

But more evidence is needed

to prove that the boomerang was the world's first aerofoil.

Uncle Moogy's people, the Ngarrindjeri,

can include in their numbers one of Australia's greatest inventors...

..David Unaipon.

He's the man on our $50 note.

UNCLE MOOGY SUMNER: Uncle David Unaipon is special to us here.

When they talk about inventors,

he was one of the best.

He done things before his time.

Unaipon invented the world's first reciprocating sheep clippers.

Shearing 100 times faster than anything else available at the time,

they completely revolutionised the wool industry

and generated an economic windfall for Australia.

But Unaipon also had other ideas...

..including one that may prove once and for all

that the boomerang was the world's first aerofoil.

Unaipon theorised that two boomerangs working together

could generate vertical take-off -

something never achieved before.

In this newspaper story,

Unaipon was conceptualising the modern helicopter...

..long before the first one was built.

But his grand idea never attracted the support it deserved until now.

OK. This is the lab.

More than a century later,

Uncle Moogy Sumner is determined

to bring David Unaipon's concept to life.

Uncle Moogy, I'd like to introduce our student team.

Hello. Yeah, yeah. G'day.

I'm Justin. Justin, yeah. Moogy.

G'day. I'm Conrad. Nice to meet you.

Natalie. Nice to meet you. Natalie.

ROB COLLINS: Over the next six weeks,

these engineering students

will attempt to build an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV,

using boomerangs as propellers.

You know the idea of putting the two together

was done back in 1914?

Oh, wow. And done by Uncle David Unaipon.

Wow. Let's make it come true.

Yeah.

(STUDENTS CHATTER)

We're gonna work with the aerodynamics of the boomerang,

which is similar to that of an aerofoil.

Yep.

Good.

I think one of the biggest challenges

is the fact that the boomerang

could generate quite a lot of vibration.

We're gonna print out a whole bunch.

This one is currently the left-handed boomerang

that we have here.

The students will use eight mini-boomerangs

back to back.

In theory, if our calculations are right,

the drone should generate some lift

and should actually lift above the ground.

Hopefully.

Isabella has a personal investment in the project.

With my Indigenous heritage,

this project kind of makes me a little bit more close to the family,

in a way.

I have thought about the ancient boomerang -

how did they think of this, how did they know that it would fly?

Two weeks in and an early prototype is ready for testing.

OK. We're at 70. I'm so scared of ruining it.

Ooh... Oh, my God. There we go.

No, no, no, no. It's fine. It's fine.

Oh, my God!

No, you're short. Go more.

No, no, no, no, no! It's... Stop. Stop.

Oh!

Oh, no! It ruined it!

The students have four weeks

before the final product will be flown outside,

in real-life conditions.

UNCLE MOOGY: I'm nervous,

because there's so much belief went into this by my people back home.

Everyone knows, back home, what Uncle David done.

Historically, Western science has paid little attention

to traditional knowledge.

But today, as we face new and complex challenges,

this is starting to change.

Australia is home to thousands of plant species

that don't exist anywhere else.

My ancestors harnessed this life-giving resource

and it's this knowledge of medicine

that's bringing modern science and traditional knowledge together

in a union that ultimately benefits all of us.

Aunty Fran Bodkin knows the healing power

of thousands of Australian native plants.

Have a feel of those leaves.

Oh, yeah, they are quite spiky.

Yeah - and that's what we used around our camp fires at night.

Journalist Ben Abbatangelo has been investigating

what secrets may be found in the Australian bush.

I've been wondering - how can you tell what you can and can't eat?

Well...there's a system

and it usually starts with a child when it starts to seek its own food.

Firstly, you rub it on the back of the child's hand.

If there's no reaction there,

you rub on the inside of the elbow

and if there's no reaction there, you can start off on the lips.

And if there's no reaction there,

the kid can have a taste of it, swallow it

and if he doesn't bring it back up again...

Good to go. It's good to go.

Pharmacology professor Gerald Muench

is investigating Aunty Fran's work,

which documents the uses of 11,000 native plants.

So, we basically treat those plants

as a pharmaceutical source of compounds

and we test those plants in our cell culture esters.

We lived here for... how many thousands of years,

and we were healthy.

Gerald hopes this information

will lead to the next major pharmaceutical breakthrough.

So, Ben, let's gown you up.

Here are the lab coats. Gowns on.

Mm-hm. Beautiful.

I must admit, Professor, I was looking forward to this moment.

So, the advantage of having the pharmacopoeia

is we don't have to randomly screen all the plants in Australia

and have a higher hit rate to find active plant samples.

So, the objective is to break down the extract

into individual compounds.

Just cut them in bits and pieces.

So, I'm just cutting these. Does it matter...

Yep, many as you can, and grab a second one

and then I'll make them a bit smaller.

This native water gum is traditionally used

to clear sores and ulcers.

Today, it's hoped the chemical compounds in its leaves

may deliver a powerful remedy for inflammation.

Many of the chronic diseases are linked to chronic inflammation,

so the more people we have, the more is the need for a variety,

for an arsenal of different anti-inflammatory drugs.

We have drugs but we need better ones,

which have less side effects.

This is extract full of leaves.

So, what's happening in this moment now?

Yes. So, we have destroyed all the leaves, all the cells of the leaves.

All the compounds are now leaching out.

Incubated for 18 hours,

the solution will then be tested.

Because this plant has been used by Indigenous Australians

for thousands of years,

these active compounds are known to be safe from dangerous side effects.

Gerald's team has already made a notable discovery.

So, Ben, we have found something very exciting -

a novel molecule no-one has discovered before

and it has anti-inflammatory properties.

So, this is the structure, Ben.

You can see the molecule rotating.

These native gum leaves contain an anti-inflammatory compound,

which may have a range of other uses.

The Aunty Fran Pharmacopoeia

is a treasure-trove for medical knowledge.

Yeah, what a time to be in science here, in medicine.

Absolutely.

Using Western medicine to make the scientific discoveries

based on Indigenous knowledge.

That will bring medicinal chemistry a big step forward.

Around 100 plants in Aunty Fran's book are now being analysed.

Aboriginal knowledge, you know, if you share it,

it's your gift to the future.

Most traditional knowledge can't be found on a bookshelf.

Sometimes we must go farther afield.

Arnhem Land, in Australia's Top End,

is a place where ancient knowledge survives as an unbroken tradition.

Today,

knowledge here is helping tackle one of the world's greatest challenges...

..climate change.

Robert. I'm Robert.

Nice to meet you.

My name is Norrie Martin and this is my home.

I'm T.O. of this country.

And this is where me and my old man live.

He's a Dyungkayi for this area.

Yes. I'm Dyungkayi for this land.

Robert Redford is a senior knowledge holder,

responsible for an area of land

around the same size as Wales in Great Britain.

Rob, what's that word - 'djungkayi'? 'Caretaker'?

Yes. Sort of like a caretaker.

Like a policeman, eh? Yeah.

This is a young one.

We're looking for firesticks, essentially.

I think we found it.

So, one stick has to be harder than the other

and the other one has to be softer, to create that friction.

(INDISTINCT CONVERSATION)

Yeah. You look him, coming up.

Yeah. You can smell it too.

At a glance, this hardly looks like a solution to climate change.

There! We got our fire.

(LAUGHTER)

Wow.

But Robert and his family

run one of the world's most respected carbon-reduction programs.

Mission rolling. Mission rolling, eh?

Roger, mate. Thank you.

This is Robert's son,

Mimal ranger Robert Junior.

And today, he's stopping major wildfires from starting in future.

These rangers are dropping fires across acres of country.

Now, this might seem like the wrong thing to be doing

to combat climate change

but trust me -

these carers of country know exactly what they're doing.

Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.

Alright, Junior. What are we doing?

Well, yeah, we'll be burning along here,

so we can make a new break.

The Mimal Rangers are deploying a traditional innovation

to battle climate change.

So, gonna throw some matches up here.

Yep.

Trees are 50% carbon.

When they burn, that carbon is released into our atmosphere,

increasing global warming.

MAN: Don't go into a room you can't get out of.

The blazes that recently ravaged Australia, California and Europe

released close to a billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

That's close to the same output of carbon as Japan in a whole year.

Are you ready there? Let's do it.

Wild bushfires need fuel loads on the ground -

dead trees and grasses.

Yeah. Keep going.

Keep going.

And follow this end here. Follow the edge?

Yeah, follow the edge.

For thousands of years, Indigenous Australians have removed fuel loads

to make their land fire-resistant.

It's a case of fighting fire with fire.

Yeah. Ah.

The innovative technique uses low heat

through a special mosaic pattern.

Trees are left untouched.

I find it amazing, when you do the cold burn...

Yeah, yeah.

..how come it doesn't climb up that tree?

Yeah. So if you do it at the wrong time...

Get really hot.

(SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY) Yeah.

For millennia, this was done with just two sticks.

It's now an industrial-scale operation.

Oh, wow!

Today's burn will create a natural fire break

across 40km of land.

So, how many charges altogether do we have?

These small fire pellets ignite flames,

reducing fuel loads on the ground.

Going through here, yeah.

Yep. So they meet, the fire scars. Yeah, yeah.

The Mimal Rangers deploy this technique

across 18,000 square kilometres,

an area similar in size to a small country.

The Mimal Rangers are paid out of carbon credits.

But just how effective is their work?

So, Ben, where are we headed to today?

I'm gonna show you a historic scientific fire plot,

so, these plots are foundational

to the science that underpins the carbon accounting.

Coordinator of the program Ben Lewis calculates the carbon reduction

by measuring every tree, bit of scrub and even the leaves on the ground.

All the trees alongside the plot are measured,

so we know how much carbon is stored in our trees.

You want to have a go at tree-hugging?

Yeah, please!

Since this program became official 25 years ago,

a massive reduction in wildfires has followed.

So, what's been the end result of all this research?

I mean, how effective has it actually been?

With the accounting method, we can show

that our good fire management

essentially halves the emissions from fire.

Half? Yep.

So we've halved our carbon pollution.

Wow. That's quite significant. Yeah, it's a lot.

Deployed right across Australia,

programs like this could save millions of tons of carbon

from entering the atmosphere.

Which is one of the reasons

why First Nations communities around Australia

are seen as part of the solution.

What I've witnessed here today

is Indigenous knowledge and Western science working together

to deliver the kind of solutions that humanity will come to depend on.

Stuff that's been around for thousands of years.

After this, I'm wondering what else is possible.

After six weeks of trial and error...

..it's the day of reckoning for the unmanned aerial vehicle.

Based on a concept developed by Ngarrindjeri inventor David Unaipon,

the UAV uses boomerangs as propellers.

UNCLE MOOGY SUMNER: Back in 1914,

Uncle David Unaipon, he had that idea.

For Uncle Moogy and the Ngarrindjeri people,

this test flight has very special significance.

I mean, you look at Western science,

of how they looked at us as Aboriginal people, you know?

We were what they considered to be a backward people.

And yet we designed something from a piece of wood,

that you can throw away and it'll come back to you.

The aerodynamics of a piece of wood.

David Unaipon never received financial reward

or proper recognition

for inventing the reciprocating sheep shears.

Today, Uncle Moogy hopes to remind us all of Unaipon's brilliance...

That's what they wanted. Yeah.

..and possibly prove the boomerang was the world's first aerofoil.

It's a big day here today.

Not just for everyone but for the Ngarrindjeri People.

My people, Uncle David's people.

Today, it's gonna come to life again

and this is what we want.

Because of him.

Good.

It's the design that changed the world forever.

It made it possible for us to fly.

But was the aerofoil created

some 10,000 years before modern inventors took to the sky?

I'm nervous.

I'm nervous 'cause there's still lots of things that could go wrong,

so definitely nervous.

Good. Ready?

Oh, oh, oh...

Whoa!

Oh, yeah, low. Low. It's going, it's going!

Oh...oh!

Come on, come on!

Yeah! (STUDENTS CHEER)

(CHEERING CONTINUES)

(LAUGHS) Perfect! Whoo!

Merging modern technology with First Nations ingenuity...

..Unaipon was decades ahead of his time.

Well done. Well done.

And...and...well done, everyone.

Oh, and especially you. Thank you for being here, Moogy.

Thank you, mate. Thank you so much for coming.

Thank you so much.

Oh, good on you!

It made me feel like Uncle David Unaipon,

his dream is coming true.

It made me feel like my blood was rushing through my veins

and to feel him...feel him, it's like feeling his spirit here.

I grew up knowing him.

Watching this makes me feel like

his dreams are coming to life.

And he knows it, because his spirit is here with us.

Today's humble flight is the proof

which backdates the invention of the aerofoil

by at least 10,000 years.

It's definitely demonstrated that, you know,

boomerang technology

can lead to propulsion,

particularly vertically taking off and landing on the ground.

And today's well and truly shown that it does work.

More people are gonna study this, younger people are gonna study it

and bring it to life.

It can only get better from here.

In this series, we've revealed innovations

which aren't found anywhere else in the world...

Where you have a machine being used for 7,000 years.

..the world's most effective memory techniques,

recording events from thousands of years ago...

(SPEAKS INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE)

..maps that exist only in the mind

and are learned through song...

..astronomy...

..complex social organisation...

This is a really optimised system.

..communication systems extending thousands of kilometres...

It's amazing how much information is encoded in these objects.

..and superhighways connecting nations.

We ran 125 billion pathways

through Australia.

Now I'm about to tell you how this is all wrong.

Of course, all the information is correct

but to make this a series accessible to all audiences,

it's been divided up and compartmentalised

into history, society, law, communications and so on -

but that's not how First Nations knowledge functions.

See, in my culture,

everything is connected.

In the Northern Territory,

Elder Yidumduma Bill Harney

is offering curator Tui Raven a glimpse

into how all knowledge interconnects.

So, where are you gonna take me now?

At a sacred site, story and art link to the moon...

..and the moon helps Bill to predict the weather.

In the Northern Territory,

Elder Yidumduma Bill Harney

is offering curator Tui Raven a glimpse

into how all knowledge interconnects.

So, where are you taking me now?

This place is sacred to Bill's people,

the Wardaman.

Gundawa? Gundawa.

At first, this story seems to be just that - a story.

Often misunderstood by outsiders,

Dreaming stories are much more than just a good yarn.

This one actually helps Uncle Bill predict the weather,

by indicating when a storm or rain is coming.

This here is a headdress? Yeah, headdress.

The Moon Spirit wears a headdress...

..a symbol of a very real and well-known natural phenomenon

called moon haloes.

Moon haloes are light refracting

through ice crystals in cirrus clouds.

Cirrus clouds often precipitate storms.

Elders examine the position of the halo to the moon...

..how many stars appear within the halo

and the number of haloes present

to predict atmospheric conditions like storms.

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

This story has taught countless generations of Wardaman people

how to predict rain and storms.

Through spiritual beliefs,

First Nations knowledge connects to the physical world.

You know your lore and you know your country and your songlines

and creation time.

Yeah, yeah. You know your country pretty well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're very sprightly. (BOTH LAUGH)

There's enormous value for us all

in Indigenous knowledge.

But first, there are barriers that are yet to be overcome.

Every single Indigenous person featured in this series

bears the impact of colonisation

and its enduring legacy.

This is...not so long ago.

Still fresh in our minds.

(SOFTLY) Just...two seconds.

They, like me, know

that if Western and traditional knowledge are to work together,

to solve the great challenges we face today...

..we all need to better understand the past.

And it starts with conversations like this one.

Hey, Denise. Hi. How are you?

Good. How are you doing? I'm good.

Welcome to Lake Condah Mission.

Hey, Denise. Hi. How are you?

Good. How are you doing? I'm good.

Welcome to Lake Condah Mission.

On Gunditjmara country,

Tui Raven is learning about the brutal war

waged against Denise Lovett's people.

As to what's happened to my grandmother,

my mother, my great-grandmothers,

my grandfathers...

..what happened to them should never happen to them.

Squatters, who started grazing livestock here in the 1830s,

had scant regard for the traditional owners.

(ANGRY SHOUTING, GUNFIRE)

Violence soon erupted.

It was just greed that was doing it.

They just wanted the land

and they didn't want nothing to do with the people,

so they just killed them.

Gunditjmara warriors resisted the squatters

and fought a frontier war that lasted decades.

Eventually, the Gunditjmara were brutally overpowered.

My great-grandmother Hannah,

she had come on the mission with her mother as a toddler.

They'd come down through, um, Budj Bim.

Her mother, Susanna,

hid her and her brother in the reeds.

'Cause a massacre was happening.

Denise's great-grandmother was among the survivors.

And you think...Gunditjmara country had 59 clans.

59 families that lived across our country from the, um...

..Glenelg River to the Hopkins River,

just the other side of Warrnambool.

Through the massacres and the sicknesses

and killing times,

70 people got to be here at one time.

And, um...the rest never made it.

Survivors were forced to live on Lake Condah Mission.

They made it to here.

Susanna died here at Lake Condah Mission

and Hannah and her brother... grew up here.

Traditional knowledge was banned.

So, this was the building that they put the children into.

That was that separation - break that cultural connection.

Yeah. And that's what was happening here.

Despite the most extraordinary adversity imaginable,

traditional knowledge is now regenerating rapidly.

Today, Denise's son Tyson continues Gunditjmara tradition

by managing country.

I see the opportunities.

I've seen how my children and my nieces and nephews and my community

have grown up and been supported.

So it's their time to do things

that they want to do and achieve their dreams.

There's a tremendous wave of cultural revitalisation

that's coming through

and it's an amazing time to witness that.

MAN: It requires making that reconnection,

getting feet on the ground, connecting with country,

understanding what it needs.

Because of when we were colonised,

a lot of our mob have actually forgotten this

but the thing about this system is that you just need one individual

to know where they fit -

so, for example, that may be, like, my mother,

then you can work out where you fit in the system.

You can reseed the entire system,

so it's robust to disruption and colonialism

and we can get it back - it's all there.

WOMAN: What we find, again and again,

is when we bring our Western science to look at a question,

there's invariably an Indigenous science

that's already been thinking about that, into deep time.

MAN: Our teaching's been passed down

through generations, then generations

and those teachings are to be looking after country,

looking after the environment.

The way forward is together.

And I think it's one great thing about Aboriginal people,

is that we are open to moving forward together.

It's how we marry old science and new science

and we get a future for our... for our kids.

The revival and spread of this knowledge

acts as a great beacon of hope

for all Australians...

..and our shared future on this continent.

But I can't help but feel

that we've only just touched the tip of the iceberg.

There's so much more that this country has to reveal.

I guess we just need to be listening.

Captions by Red Bee Media