... Since these words were written by Etheridge, more than a century ago, considerable evidence has been amassed in favour of a great antiquitv for human presence in Australia. Proof of this antiquitv had to wait, however, until the advent of physical dating methods in archaeology. The initial insights were provided by radiocarbon (14C) dating of organic remains found at human occupation sites, and they transformed our knowledge of Australian prehistory. A full account of this 'radiocarbon revolution' has been chronicled by Jones (1989, 1993). The first direct date for Pleistocene occupation was obtained from Kenniff Cave in southern Queensland (Mulvanev 1962), but, by the end of the 1960s, ages of 20,000-30,000 radiocarbon years had been reported for sites around the continent. The next decade saw the date for initial colonisation extend back to 38,000 radiocarbon years, based on finds at Lake Mungo in western New South Wales, and near Perth in Western Australia. Some prehistorians (eg Jones 1982) have long regarded such 14C ages as minimum ages for colonisation, as they lie near the limit of the method, while others (such as Allen 1989) have recently asserted that first landfall need not have occurred earlier than 35,000 years ago.
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Roberts et al. (1994) studied this question.