ABSTRACT
When the first European explorers arrived in the Bass Strait region at the end of the eighteenth century, the more remote Bass Strait islands such as the Furneaux group and King Island were truly terra nullius. Moreover, no evidence such as shell middens was observed that would have suggested that these islands had been occupied or visited by Aboriginal people in past times (Flinders 1801, 1814; Baudin 1803; Peron 1802 in Micco 1971:11; Cumpston 1973:44-5).
