For more than 60,000 years, the Australian landscape has been under Aboriginal management.

Aboriginal people have a special relationship to land that is different to the majority of non-Aboriginals. It is not a commodity to be bought and sold.

This relationship has survived intact despite the destructive impact of European settlement, which began in earnest in northern Australia 100 years ago.

In 1995 the Northern Land Council created the Caring for Country Unit to help Aboriginal landowners deal with the new land and sea management challenges they faced and to consider commercial enterprises promising environmentally sustainable development. The establishment of Aboriginal ranger groups has been a central part of the Unit's work.

Caring for Country plays a key role in land and sea management - including fire management and feral weed and animal control - across the Top End, and has been active in preserving traditional knowledge for future generations of Aboriginal people.

Its success in forging funding partnerships with external organisations has allowed it to progressively expand the scale of its activities to the point where it is now one of the largest operating units within the NLC.