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Digital stories

Landforms of the land bridge
First Peoples witnessed the most recent transition of Bass Strait from land to sea between 45,000 to 10,000 years ago, but the strait has alternated between being a land bridge and a seaway for more than four million years. Its geological origins reach even further back in time.

Charcoal and pollen from old lakes
Collecting sediment cores from Bass Strait island lakes provides insight into life on the ancient Bassian Plain, and provides evidence of First Nations People effectively using fire to manage these landscapes over thousands of years.

Flood dreaming stories
Dreaming stories like Gurawul the Whale and other stories involving flood and sea change link the Original First People to the Ancestors, culture, song lines and the land bridge.

Australian Marine Parks of the land bridge
Australian marine parks preserve important marine environments and underwater worlds – including the unique area of the ancient Bass Strait land bridge.

Gunnai language and the land bridge
Within Gunnai language there are names and stories which are evidence of connections to Lutruwita/Tasmania which have never been lost, just submerged by the waters.

Mapping the seabed
Newly discovered reef systems within the Beagle Marine Park, now hotspots for sponge biodiversity, were once important shelter along the Bass Strait land bridge for First Peoples.

Sea birds of Bass Strait
The islands of Bass Strait host a diverse range of seabird species, from albatross to penguins, serving as critical habitats for breeding, maintaining seabird populations and conservation.

Hardy island plants of the eastern Bass Strait seabird rookeries
After sea levels rose, the islands of the eastern Bass Strait, which once had been hills overlooking the Bassian Plain, became seabird rookeries that formed a nutrient rich environment few hardy Australian plants could survive in.

Sea Country is a living being
There are two ways of seeing the world now. The first way is short sighted and needs a new lens, the second way is to open the other eye which sees clearly and without assistance.

Fur seals and the Bass Strait
Bass Strait’s playful fur seals are now recovering from a close call with human commercial hunters who almost caused their extinction two hundred years ago.

Shipwreck over the land bridge
When the sailing ship the Sydney Cove crashed into remnants of the ancient land bridge, seventeen sailors were compelled to cross Bass Strait and walk 600 miles to Sydney. How did they survive the ordeal?

Fossils from hilltop caves tell tales of a flooded land bridge
Eons of owl vomit document small mammal responses to environment change on the ancient Bassian Plain.

Birds of a feather don’t always flock together
The rise and fall of the ancient Bass Strait land bridge helped drive a number of biogeographical bird anomalies, including missing currawongs, curious scrubwren distributions and a mysterious absence of emus.

Tayaritja milaythina muka
Pakana Sea Country Rangers are working with community and government to monitor the health of Sea Country around Tayaritja/the Bass Strait Islands and northeastern Lutruwita/Tasmania and develop a Sea Country Indigenous Protected Area (IPA).

The underwater food web of the Bass Strait
From the microscopic to macroscopic, each organism living beneath the waves has its own place in the food web of the Bass Strait.

Do memories of the Bassian land bridge survive?
Without the aid of writing, humans could once remember things that happened thousands of years earlier simply through oral communication, as exemplified by memories of when people walked to Lutruwita/Tasmania across the now-submerged Bassian land bridge.

Megafauna, survival and extinction across the Bassian Plain
Since the Ice Ages, the Bassian Plain land bridge has played a key role in shaping the diversity of species living in Lutruwita/Tasmania.

Deep human connection lies under the Bass Strait
New research using computational modelling can help us understand the likely pathways people used to travel to, live on, and traverse the Bass Strait land bridge.

Was the Bass Plain a bridge or a filter?
Why could wombats and kangaroos cross the land bridge but not koalas? We can tell a lot about the ancient Bass Plain landscape from the types of animals that made it to Lutruwita/Tasmania from mainland Australia.