Aboriginal art, Ubirr, Northern Territory

There is a walk approximately two kilometres long which follows a track
around the rocks in Ubirr. There is an amazing amount of Aboriginal art -
and our slide session with the ranger on Sunday night was really helpful as
we recognised various pieces that she had explained to us.

The art ranges in age from recent through to 30,000 years. It is hard for
us to imagine the art being that old but this has been proven. The
Aboriginal people used their art as a language to pass on stories through
the generations as their language was not written. So the first photo here
tells young people the value of good behaviour.

The following two photos is quite hard to distinguish as there are layers of
paintings. This is because over the years the story continued and so each
generation would add their own painting over the top of the previous
picture. These pictures are of fishing and the types of fish that were
caught. The yellow colouring used in the later paintings was helpful to see
them.

These paintings are all on the rock walls at various heights and not
occasional but cover large areas of rock.