In a recent article, I (and my colleagues) present models of population change for key regions across Australia over the last 35,000 years. We use these models to test an archaeological method (the use of numbers of radiocarbon dates as an indicator of human behaviour), explore the relationship of Aboriginal people and climate change, and to provide a status update for Australian archaeological research. We find that the archaeological technique is reliable, albeit with well-documented caveats that the user needs to be aware of. We find a close relationship between Aboriginal population and climate change for much of the last 35,000 years, with increasing divergence of the records in the last 6,000 years as numbers of people increase and techniques were developed to survive environmental shifts. We identify key areas of future research for the Australian archaeological community, including the need to fill spatial gaps across parts of the continent, and to focus on key temporal periods where significant change in society appears evident.