Rock art

Starting to the east of Kakadu National Park, and running south west across the park, is an inland cliff that forms the edge of the Arnhem Land plateau. The sandstone forming the plateau is ancient: it was laid down 1,000 million years ago – 450 million years before the first multicellular organisms evolved. From 500-140 million years ago, the sea spread into the area, eroding the sandstone into sea cliffs and leaving a few small islands, which are now rocky outliers, like this one at Ubirr with the Arnhem Land escarpment in the distance:

Both the plateau and the rocky outcrops are ecologically interesting, but the rock outcrops are much visited for another reason. The rock formations often provided sheltered sites where the aborigines could live – and which also offered a canvas on which to express their artistic talents.

Some of the artwork is quite old. These small human figures are thought to be about 5,000 years old:

- while some of it is clearly more recent:

Determining the age of the artwork is complicated: the rocky overhangs only partially protect it so it gradually disappears. Generations of aborigines have both ‘touched-up’ previous artwork, and drawn totally new images over faded older ones. Dating the artwork is further complicated because the red, yellow and white pigments used are all mineral ‘ochres’, so only the black charcoal areas can be aged using carbon-dating. Really it’s best to forget about the peculiar obsession of western cultures with the antiquity of artwork and just enjoy the images.

Some of the images are of food, like this long-necked turtle …

… and these fishes, which form part of a magnificent frieze, in which several different kinds of fish are clearly differentiated:

This last piece of artwork in this blog was done by ‘Barramundi Charlie’ in the 1960s, a couple of years before his death. He was the last of his clan to have the ‘right’ to produce artwork at this particular site (there are three sites that are open to visitors in Kakadu), so no more will be added there. The figure in white on the right is Namarrgan, the lightning man, and the figure on the left is his wife Barrginj. The two of them are the parents of Aljurr – or Leichhardt’s grasshopper – an important species to the aborigines in the area because their appearance each year presages the first storms of the rains. Namarrgan wears his lightning as a band around him, connecting his arms, legs and head, and the stone axes on his elbows and knees produce thunder.

Namurrgan lives at the lightning dreaming on the Arnhem Land escarpment – the three pillar-like bulges in the escarpment in the centre of the photo below. It is a dangerous sacred place, and the aboriginies avoid going there, as trouble will result if Namarrgan is disturbed.