Aboriginal Gallery

An band of yellow ochre in a pit at the Granites

An band of yellow ochre in a pit at the Granites. Aboriginal people used ochre for ceremonial body painting and rituals and to paint artifacts and message diagrams, using different coloured pigments: some ochre is heated up, colour varying with temperature. Once prepared, the ochre was mixed with a binder such as garliwun (tree resin), bush honey, egg yolks or kangaroo blood. The artist was then ready to begin painting. Mount Magnet, Northern Goldfields, Western Australia

Aboriginal cave paintings in rock shelter - Gwion Gwion rock art (formerly called Bradshaw)

Aboriginal cave paintings in rock shelter - Gwion Gwion rock art (formerly called Bradshaw). These dynamic line figures wearing ornaments and headdresses and carrying boomerangs and other weapons are believed to be the oldest figurative art in Australia. Some of the rock art in north-western Australia has yielded a minimum age in excess of 20 000 years. It is by far the oldest human art in the southern hemisphere and may be among the most ancient in the world. In this category are ant-like charcoal paintings now known as Gwion Gwion figures, like this one sealed by a silica desert varnish into the walls of a rock shelter. Modern Aborigines disclaim authorship of such art and say that it was done by Dreamtime spirits. Manning Gorge, Kimberley region, Western Australia

© Reg Morrison/AUSCAPE All rights reserved

Petroglyph on greenstone, granite of Archaean age, of unknown origin

Petroglyph on greenstone, granite of Archaean age, of unknown origin. Aboriginal owners disclaim authorship and say the designs were done by legendary spirits. Such abstract forms are typical of NW Australia's desert rock art and are among Australia's oldest rock art. The granite is an outcrop of a greenstone batholith, part of the buoyant greenstone raft that coalesced to form the Pilbara Block foundations over three billion years ago.
. Eastern Pilbara, Western Australia

© Reg Morrison/AUSCAPE All rights reserved