When Prince Harry trains with the largely Indigenous NORFORCE unit, he may learn some of their secrets, but he might struggle to ever be anywhere near as good at spotting enemies as the diggers are.
The reason is the way the eyes and brains of Indigenous Australians are wired.
An expert in Indigenous eye health has said some Aboriginal people in outback Australia have vision that can be more than four times better than non-Indigenous people.
They can see things that are four times smaller than what is assumed most people can see, making their vision the best in the world.
It also makes the North West Mobile Force (NORFORCE) team particularly useful when it comes to seeing an enemy from a long way away, and in their work patrolling about 1.8 million square kilometres of land in the NT and Western Australia.
In times of peace NORFORCE spotters are used to find asylum seeker vessels or illegal fishing ships in Australian waters that may otherwise go unnoticed.
The incredible ability is known as "sharper vision" or "super sight".
"The super sight is the way their retina and brain is wired, and they are probably like that from childhood," said Professor Hugh Taylor, who pioneered studies into super sight.
In fact Professor Taylor's studies have shown that some Aboriginal people in the NT, WA and SA had 6:1.4 vision, meaning they could see things from six metres away that an average non-Indigenous person could see only from 1.4m away.
Not all people studied had such high vision, and others were sometimes recording 6:2 or 6:3 vision, which was still far better than is usual for the general population.
"The vision of the Aboriginal people, the fineness of their vision, is better than has been reported anywhere else in the world," he said.
abc.net.au
how can any other country even compete with Australia?
even our natives are better than any others
