For everyone TV review: The First Inventors, SBS
For some 65,000 years, Australia’s First Peoples created sophisticated communities, farming systems and tools. This magnificent doco series directed by Larissa Behrendt puts paid to backwards notions erasing those achievements.
Revealing the vast array of inventions deployed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders by the many clans who call this place home, these ‘discoveries’, long understood by Elders, are backed up by the latest archaeological advances.
Hosted with evident pride by charismatic Tiwi Island man Rob Collins (Limbo, Total Control) and featuring awe-inspiring cinematography, The First Inventors offers an exhilarating insight into the true story of this country.
From the ancient lines of eel traps furrowed into the lava beds that wind around the waterways enveloping Gunditjmara Country’s Budj Bim volcano (most likely the world’s first aquaculture system) to boomerang technology pre-dating the aerial invention of the Wright Brothers by countless millennia, the program is an eye-opener with a big, generous heart and should be mandatory viewing in all schools.
