Why is reconstructing Proto-Australian difficult?

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Distinctive features of Australia's Indigenous languages — Australian Aboriginal languages A discussion of the languages of Indigenous Australians.

Reconstructing Proto-Australian is challenging primarily due to the immense length of time over which these languages have developed. While Australian Aboriginal languages share a consistent grammatical and phonological profile, this significant temporal depth complicates the identification of common ancestral forms.1

Additionally, the study of these languages faces practical hurdles. Many speech varieties became extinct before they could be systematically documented, leaving researchers to rely on fragmentary or poorly transcribed historical word lists. While a major collective effort to record surviving languages began in the 1970s, the lack of comprehensive data for many extinct or poorly recorded varieties hinders the ability to establish clear, widespread cognate sets across the continent.1