ABSTRACT
Australian Aboriginal culture, one of the oldest continuous living traditions, is tightly interwoven with Country, an embodiment of the physical, biological, spiritual, cultural and experiential elements of landscapes such as land, sea and sky. For Aboriginals, land is inseparable from Country and a mere legal construct. For millennia, Aboriginals, discharging their role as custodians, have sustainably managed the health, integrity, stability and beauty of Country. The importance of land within Aboriginal culture transcends generations and involves a spiritual and material connection to land, where land is not measurable in mathematical terms, nor delineated through the mapping or textual mediums of a western society. The Crown acquired the absolute beneficial ownership of the land pursuant to a radical title. The doctrine of terra nullius provides that a sovereign State can acquire uninhabited land as a new territory, a radical title, through conquest, cession or occupation. Native title is sui generis and cannot be readily compartmentalised within the common law.
