Living in the immediate path of European colonization, the Aborigines of the southeast were the first to suffer from its effects; their culture was extinguished with some rapidity, and the area was practically depopulated. Their culture had been relatively rich. The temperate climate and the natural resources of the great Murray and Darling river systems stimulated a number of regional variations in art and material culture. In response to the cool winters, the Aborigines built fairly substantial wood shelters, covered with bark sheets and animal skins. They made large cloaks by sewing together opossum pelts incised with decorative patterns on the inner sides. For transport and fishing on the rivers, they built simple bark canoes.

Throughout the area, the basic designs were geometric. Objects were frequently engraved with dense patterns of solid or dotted zigzags and parallel lines. The rich texture thus created served as a background for other carved geometric designs, such as squares or diamonds, as well as for painted elements. Local variations in style are best seen in shields, of which there were four main types. From roughly north to south, the first type was an elongated oval with a convex surface. The second, used for parrying, was extremely narrow and was triangular in section. In the Murray River area, shields were thin, flat, broad ovals with a projecting tab at each end. The fourth type of shield, found east of the Murray River, was a narrow elongated oval pointed at both ends. Other weapons included long spear-throwers and a remarkable range of club types, with spatulate, hooked, or knobbed heads. In areas where the second and third types of shields were made, decorated boomerangs were also used for fighting, but they were engraved with uncharacteristic designs.

The ritual art of the northern area included abstract and representational designs channeled into the ground and large-scale earth effigies. Bark effigies and paintings on bark are recorded but have not survived. In the northwest, a unique form of monument was created: the dendroglyph, an engraving on a living tree trunk. Carved in the usual geometric style, dendroglyphs featured clan designs or made references to local myths. They were used to mark the graves of notable men or to indicate the perimeters of ceremonial grounds.

The north

From the rain-forest country of northeastern Queensland comes an unusual type of shield, a large flat oval with somewhat asymmetrically curved sides. Most have a raised central boss. Designs above and below the boss radiate away from it and are outlined in black and infilled with red, white, and yellow. As usual, they refer to mythological beings and episodes. Paddles and cross-shaped boomerangs were painted in the same manner for ceremonial use.

The lavish use of colour on these objects is indicative of the emphasis placed on painting among the areas to the north, especially around the Gulf of Carpentaria and on its islands, in Cape York and Arnhem Land, and on Melville and Bathurst islands and Groote Eylandt. In Arnhem Land, paintings on bark sheets included both figurative images and the geometric designs typically used in sacred contexts. Paintings from western Arnhem Land and some adjacent islands were often in the X-ray style, in which animals are painted on dark monochrome backgrounds with their internal organs showing. In paintings of northeastern Arnhem Land the field was completely filled with both representational and geometric images depicted in fine-line cross-hatching. These images referred to ancestral myths and are programmatic, even narrative, in content.

Unlike the rest of Australia, the northern zone is rich in three-dimensional wood sculpture. The Tiwi people of Melville and Bathurst islands created tall poles in abstract forms by carving, removing, or leaving in their original dimensions alternate sections of a tree trunk. Each pole was then painted in flat areas of colour interspersed with bands of cross-hatching. Such poles were planted in clusters as grave markers in elaborate funerary ceremonies, and boldly painted bark containers for offerings were placed on the poles. Throughout the northern region, small carvings of birds, animals, and plants were typical sacred emblems; but in northeastern Arnhem Land, as nowhere else in Australia, large figures of human beings also were used in ritual and sometimes as grave markers. This use of human figures has been attributed to the influence of Indonesian fishermen who visited the area for shell and sea cucumber, but it is also possible that it resulted from contact with the Torres Strait islanders to the north.