section_path: History/Oceania/Australia
section_name: Australia
paragraph_text: Australia
  
  Australian Aboriginal culture has thrived on oral traditions and oral histories passed down through thousands of years.In a study published in February 2020, new evidence showed that both Budj Bim and Tower Hill volcanoes erupted between 34,000 and 40,000 years ago. Significantly, this is a "minimum age constraint for human presence in Victoria ", and also could be interpreted as evidence for the oral histories of the Gunditjmara people, an Aboriginal Australian people of south-western Victoria, which tell of volcanic eruptions being some of the oldest oral traditions in existence. A basalt stone axe found underneath volcanic ash in 1947 had already proven that humans inhabited the region before the eruption of Tower Hill.