As you walk in the footsteps of Canberra's Murrumbung Rangers, you begin to see the landscape with very different eyes.

"There are stone fragments everywhere under our feet, just below this gravel," ranger Jackson Taylor-Grant says, as we walk to the Hanging Rock shelter in Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.

"Our people have been using this place as refuge for up to 25,000 years, well through the last ice age."

When we reach the Hanging Rock site, a huge, rounded granite boulder with an obvious weather-proof overhang, he explains why it is so significant to Indigenous people.

"If you can imagine getting to -20 degrees Celsius or -25C, you're looking at some pretty cold temperatures to have to survive in. Without shelter like this, it's pretty impossible," he said.

"So yes, it is quite basic, but it was heavily used by our people, and these sites are very important to us today — we treat these sites with a lot of respect."

Mr Taylor-Grant said the whole of the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve was quite significant to the Ngunnawal people.

"We find countless evidence of our people living in this site through artefacts [and] bone fragments," he said.

"We still regularly come up here for interpretive walks and talks, but also our people come up here and they practice things like smoking ceremonies."

Murrumbung Yurung Murra

Travis Blackburn is passionate about passing on his people's knowledge to a younger generation. ( ABC News: Craig Allen )

The Murrumbung Yurung Murra staff network — better known as the Murrumbung Rangers — was established a decade ago to give young Indigenous people job opportunities in landcare.

There are currently nine rangers spread across Canberra's parks depot, working to preserve Aboriginal heritage sites, conducting cultural burns, and enthusiastically sharing their knowledge of ancient Australia with school groups.

Their name comes from the local Ngunnawal language, and fittingly means "Good Strong Pathways".

Kie Barratt is one of the rangers — and his love for his vocation is obvious, as he shows me a collection of boomerangs, shields and Indigenous tools that he also shows to visiting school kids.

"I'm very passionate about this work, because passing on that knowledge to these young kids is important," Mr Barratt said.

"Our story needs to be told to everyone. We all live in Australia and we all need to know that story."

The Indigenous links to Tidbinbilla and adjacent Namadgi National Park were formally recognised back in 2001, when the ACT Government signed a joint management agreement with local Aboriginal groups.

As a result, Indigenous employment in the ACT parks system is enshrined in law.

Cultural knowledge and cultural burning practices

Jackson Taylor-Grant demonstrates the cultural burning of a grass tree or xanthorrhoea australis. ( ABC News: Craig Allen )

On a hillside overlooking Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, Mr Taylor-Grant displays another example of the Murrumbung Rangers' work — the practice of cultural burning.

As he stands next to an impressive xanthorrhoea australis, or grass tree, he explains its importance.

"We refer to these as fire trees, they love fire — they need burning to clean off all the old growth they've got here," Mr Taylor-Grant said.

"It's also just a traditional practice done to clean up the trees, to promote some of the sap to come out of the tree for our use."

He said the hardened sap that pooled from the burning trees was traditionally used to fix stone tool heads, or as an effective mosquito repellent when tossed into a campfire.

"[The trees] are also excellent firelighters. Even if it's raining there's always some dry material to start a fire," he said.

When he lights the dried fronds of the grass tree, the plant erupts in a ball of flame and throws off tremendous heat.

"There's a big movement at the moment using cultural knowledge and cultural burning protocols to manage landscapes using fire," he said.

Mr Taylor-Grant said having Aboriginal rangers perform cultural burns reconnected them to the land.

"It is a job that comes with having to have a lot of passion for what you do. And you can see it just bleed out of Aboriginal people when they come into this landscape," Mr Taylor-Grant said.

"We take hold of that passion, and we use it to take care of this landscape.

"Working as professional rangers for Parks and Conservation is a really good way of capturing that passion and using it to the advantage of the management of these areas."