(Australia)Aboriginal people of earlier generations, or living in a traditional manner, as regarded by their descendants as repositories of traditional knowledge. [from 20th c.]
2002, Alex Miller, Journey to the Stone Country, Allen & Unwin, published 2003, page 273:
‘You don't see them figs nowhere else up here. And it didn't get here by accident neither. Them old people planted her beside the springs in a sheltered place against the rocks hundreds of years back.’
2018, Melissa Lucashenko, Too Much Lip, University of Queensland Press, published 2023, page 289:
She breathed in the scent of the gum leaves and the wattle blossom washing across the narrow channel that separated them from the Old People.
