Australia’s ‘oldest houses’ are part of a Mithaka cultural landscape in Queensland’s Channel Country that was entered on the National Heritage List on 5 December 2025.
Read more from Douglas Smith, Indigenous Affairs reporter, The Guardian, Saturday 6 December 2025: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/05/australia-national-heritage-list-mithaka-aboriginal-site?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Details of the national heritage listing, updated on 5 December 2025, are on Australia’s Federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water’s website here: https://www.dcceew.gov.au/parks-heritage/heritage/places/national/mithaka-cultural-landscape
A Central Australian gunyah or wurley, 1930s, (Public Domain)
First Peoples built periodic and more permanent shelters like these for thousands of years. Some First People’s houses in various parts of pre-contact Australia also had stone bases and walls with roofs made from vegetation (e.g. Wallis et al. Queensland Archaeological Research, Vol. 20, 2017, pp. 1–8). The remains of two rare gunyahs dating from c. 1770 and 1787, before the arrival of the First Fleet that began British colonisation of Australia, were discovered on Mithaka Country as part of the extensive research undertaken in south-west Queensland’s Channel Country.
The Debney Peace or Accord
Smith’s article: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/05/australia-national-heritage-list-mithaka-aboriginal-site?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other also mentions peace negotiations–a form of treaty–that took place in 1889 between First Nations of the Channel Country and pastoralists after many years of frontier violence and war. More about ‘The Debney Peace’ or ‘Debney Accord’ can be heard on programs like ABC Listen’s ‘What was the Debney Accord?’ on 21 June 2022: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/nightlife/debney-peace-accord/13938566.
You can also read about the Debney Peace on the Kirrenderri website: https://www.kirrenderri.com.au/general-8, accessed 6 December 2025. The Kirrenderri website also has Education Resources about First Nations and Queensland’s Channel Country: https://www.kirrenderri.com.au/general-1.