Walkabout

Walkabout historically refers to a rite of passage during which Indigenous male Australians would undergo a journey during adolescence, typically ages 10 to 16, and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months to make the spiritual and traditional transition into manhood. Walkabout has come to be referred to as "temporary mobility" because its original name has been used as a derogatory term in Australian culture, demeaning its spiritual significance.

The term "walkabout" is commonly used to characterize indigenous Australian people as highly mobile over the short-term. Such movement is considered problematic for mainstream health care and housing programs.

In the case of Indigenous Australia, life-cycle stages, such as traditional rites of passage, seem to influence the motivations for movement more than the frequency of movement. But non-aboriginal employers did not fully understand the abrupt leaving and returning as a valid reason for missing work. The reasons for leaving may be more mundane than originally thought: workers who wanted or needed to attend a ceremony or visit relatives did not accept employers' control over such matters.

"Temporary mobility" refers to any nomadic lifestyle that does not establish a permanent residence and includes a significant amount of movement for religious observance. Young adults have the highest mobility rate of all age groups in Australia; males make up the majority of the rate. Youth is the time of the traditional "walkabout" rite of passage, which marks the transition into adulthood.

Mobility as a topic of research is difficult to track and measure. In present research, professionals have identified technology as being a factor of current mobility in young adults in Australia. However, no formal, sound research has been conducted on this subject matter specifically. The lack of female presence in research results has determined that Australian women participate in the national census less than their male counterparts leading to the underrepresentation of women in mobility research. This underrepresentation in research is due to the fact that most mobility research relies highly on the census as its primary form of data collection. The Australian census occurs on one night nationally, the occurrence of the census makes it difficult to track mobility as does the finding that women in Australia are typically out of their usual residence at night, also leading to the underrepresentation of women in research.

Currently, any form of government statistical measures are not able to provide any detailed indication of the frequency, volume, or direction of Indigenous temporary mobility. They are unable to provide any sort of consistent statistics for the frequency in which the indigenous aboriginals travel make any previous statistics out of date. Although mobility has been a central feature of Indigenous lived experience for thousands of years, non-Indigenous attempts to understand and conceptualize it through time have been unsuccessful as well as being few and far between.

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