Budj Bim: Australia's first World Heritage site listed for its Indigenous cultural value

In the Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected Area, the world is brilliantly alive. Darlots Creek has burst its banks, swans cruise in the distance, a pair of brolgas has recently taken flight, and a koala and her joey navigate their way through the thin branches of a tree, poised above the water. It's a living landscape in every sense, but no more so than culturally.

Tyrendarra is one piece of the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, Australia's newest Unesco World Heritage site (inscribed in 2019) and the first site listed purely for its Indigenous cultural value.

Here, among the volcanic terrain of Victoria's south-west, Gunditjmara people started altering the landscape almost 7000 years ago, cutting channels in the lava flow from nearby Budj Bim volcano to divert streams and direct short-finned eels, or kooyang, into woven traps.

“This is one of the oldest aquaculture systems in the world,” says Indigenous ranger Ben Church. “The people knew the hydrology of the land so well that they could manipulate the land.”

Three Indigenous Protected Areas – Tyrendarra, Kurtonitj and Lake Condah – form the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape along the edge of Budj Bim National Park. I've come to Tyrendarra with tour company Hedonistic Hiking, where we meet Church beside the overflowing waters of Darlots Creek.

Surrounded by the high reeds of the wetlands, the Gunditjmara man, who has spent most of his life on Country, welcomes us in a simple smoking ceremony, burning leaves of native pine, manna gum and the black wattle that, when flowering, has long told the Gunditjmara that the eels are migrating.

With Church, we drive 10 minutes to Kurtonitj, a former grazing property veined with waterways and eel channels, along with foundations of the circular stone dwellings in which the Gunditjmara lived for millennia.

From a large installation of a calendar outlining the six Gunditjmara seasons, steel-mesh walkways head out across the streams to two channels flowing between basalt stones placed thousands of years ago to direct the water flow.

Such channels were up to 1400 metres in length and one metre in depth, designed with narrow constrictions into which woven basket traps would be placed.

Under his arm, Church carries an eel trap woven in the traditional form by one of the Aunties a couple of years ago, demonstrating its ingenuity as he dips it into a channel. A wide opening narrows to a point where the trapped eels couldn't turn around and swim out, while a small hole at the end allowed juvenile eels to swim straight through while ensnaring the adults.

“Traditionally the mob would smoke the eels, and they'd do it in the hollows of manna gums,” Church says as we pass a large eucalypt that's thought to have been one such smokehouse from nature. “We think this one was a smoking tree, though it's now fallen in.” Tests have found traces of oil from the eels in samples from around the tree.

There are eel channels scattered across Kurtonitj, but the most complex systems are at Lake Condah, as were the bulk of the stone dwellings, reflecting the bounty of food at the lake.

On Lake Condah's shore sits the beautifully designed Tae Rak Aquaculture Centre, opened in August 2022 as a tourism hub for Budj Bim. The centre was designed so that it faces the Budj Bim volcano, as the stone dwellings did, looking over the lake where swans and cygnets sail about, and swallows swoop after insects. It features an eel holding tank on the shaded deck, as well as a bush tucker café, serving the likes of smoked eel arancini. It's also the starting point for guided cultural walks.

The walks begin beside the eel tank, where guide Shannon Gaita details the life of the kooyang and their migration – tagged eels have been found to migrate as far as New Caledonia, a journey of around 5000 kilometres.

The tour is a casual stroll, out along a metal walkway over the lake and then beside the shores to the lake's outlet and into the lava flow that made this cultural landscape possible. Beyond these stone rises known as blisters, in the lower wetlands, there's another eel channel, while atop them are the foundations of another stone hut of the sort that has challenged beliefs about Indigenous nomadic existence. So abundant were the resources around Budj Bim that the Gunditjmara built these permanent dwellings.

"We were never nomads," Shannon says.

Hedonistic Hiking's seven-day South West Coast and The Grampians trip spends a day at the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape. From A$3795 (NZ$4130) a person. See

Two-hour cultural walking tours at Lake Condah run twice a day Wednesday to Sunday, $85 a person. See

-