Willandra Lakes Skeletal Collection: A Photographic and Descriptive Catalogue

This chapter is the central record of the Willandra Lakes Collection. The section is a descriptive and photographic record of the collection. A detailed anatomical description of each individual in the Willandra Lake Collection is presented representing the only physical description of the earliest Australians and the earliest modern humans to enter the Southern Hemisphere discovered so far. Most importantly, uncertainty over the future of the collection will render this work the only record available for future reference as this will be the last work published about it. Moreover, future work in the Willandra region is also not guaranteed because many Aboriginal people regard it a sacred area. The value of the collection extends beyond that, however, to that fact they mark the first modern humans to cross an ocean and discover a completely new and totally human-empty continent. Their journey needs to be told, properly recorded and recognised, particularly considering their likely fate and this chapter seeks to describe these people before they are lost through reburial.