I will be putting together a small portfolio of Australian Rock Art photographs produced on this trip. We visited three sites, none regularly visited, and one, apparently only known to the crew of the True North and its helicopter pilot.
Here's the Wikipedia entry, in part...
"Rock paintings appear on caves in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, known as Bradshaws. They are named after the European, Joseph Bradshaw, who first reported them in 1891. To Aboriginal people of the region they are known as Gwion Gwion. Traditional Aboriginal art is composed of organic colours and materials, but modern artists often use synthetic paints when creating aboriginal styles.
Aboriginal rock art has been around for a long period of time, with the oldest examples, in Western Australia's Pilbara region, and the Olary district of South Australia, estimated to be up to around 40,000 years old.[2] Rock art gives us descriptive information about social activities, material culture, economy, environmental change, myth and religion. This is an Aboriginal way of showing recognition and wisdom-to be open to the environment."
There was a couple from Australia with a passion for rock art, and they spend much of their time and money searching for sites. They claimed that this otherwise undocumented site was among the best that they'd even seen. It was a 20 minutes chopper flight over some extremely remote and inhospitable territory.
As with rock art almost anywhere in the world these are found under rocky overhangs, protected from weather. The ceilings are very low and shooting these usually meant lay on one's back on the ground and shooting upwards with a very wide angle lens.
Michael
