The art of preserving our rocks of ages
Aboriginal rangers are checking in on famous rock art sites along the Kimberley coast using photographs taken nearly 70 years ago to analyse changes.
Aboriginal rangers are checking in on their famous Wanjina and Gwion rock art sites along the Kimberley coast, using photographs taken nearly 70 years ago by anthropologist Ian Crawford to compare the former and current states of the same sites.
Descendants of people in the original photos are embarking on a heritage conservation survey of 50 sites that the Wunambal Gaambera Aboriginal Corporation has given cruise ship tourists permission to visit under their Uunguu visitor pass scheme.
Crawford took a lugger up the coast from Derby in 1963 and travelled to Kalumburu and back, taking elders with him to identify the powerful spirit images and ceremonial stone arrangements.
So far, Uunguu rangers have revisited nearly a dozen of the same sites by helicopter and road, after receiving an Australian Heritage grant to design site-assessment and data-reporting tools for monitoring their National Heritage-listed cultural places in the West Kimberley.
There was a sense of deja vu in some locations. Traditional owner Joseph Karadada was photographed setting up a monitoring site in the exact spot where Crawford posed next to a stone arrangement at Warrabii during his early expedition.
In 1963, Crawford and Karadada’s uncles and elders visited Wollaston Bay, where a former sea cave in a low sandstone cliff is decorated with Wanjina figures several metres long. Karadada says: “You got all type of wanjina, you got thunder, you got lighting and you got rain, all type of wanjina you know. They all one mob, but some of them are different. Like us, we got our own wanjina here, other people got their wanjina with their halo, that’s their wanjina.”
Traditional owners say monitoring is needed to ensure the health of their Uunguu, or “living home”. Last year, more than 16,000 tourists visited the Kimberley coast, most of them on expedition cruise ships that skirt the rugged fjord-like coast and navigate the Kimberley’s treacherous high tides.
Most tours include visits to Mitchell Falls, or Punamii-Uunpuu and a stop at Bigge Island, a popular anchorage point with spectacular rock art a short walk from the shoreline.
“Because of the narrowness of some caves, people going through can end up knocking paintings with their backpack or camera tripod without realising it,” says Healthy Country co-ordinator Tom Vigilante.
“We are doing management plans because the sites can also be influenced by cyclonic tides and sea level rise.”
Senior traditional owner Catherine Goonack says getting out to sites “feels good when we are sharing our knowledge to our young ones, and learning new ways from the scientists to help us protect our country for future generations”.
Crawford amassed a photographic collection of about 30,000 images from 30 Kimberley trips before retiring as curator of anthropology at the West Australian Museum in Perth.
“The Crawford pictures allow us to compare what a site looked like many years ago, and now,” says Vigilante. “We caught up with him last year to talk about the project.”
On previous trips, Uunguu rangers have rediscovered Wanjina and elegant black Gwion figures that Crawford and others described but were unable to be located without the benefit of GPS co-ordinates.
In one case, rangers conducting fire walks in the Lawley River region in 2018 came across a spectacular trio of Wanjina images in good condition.
Early this year, rangers Ildephonse Cheinmora and Desmond Williams were preparing to install a fence at a non-visitor cultural site at Mungalalu, near Truscott Air Base, where rows of Gwion figures and an imposing Wanjina cover the rock faces.
That Wanjina image is in the 2019 book We Are Coming To See You that senior elders including the late Sylvester Mangolamara wanted published to convey their close affinity with ancestral beings.
Mangolamara’s description of the giant Wanjina was simple: “Boss one on top.”
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout