The ancient rainforest has survived in the gorge. Above it, fires and continental warming have long since enabled dry eucalypts to replace it.
Aboriginal rock art has survived in the gorge. Sadly, its creators have long since been driven out.
Carnarvon Gorge in central Queensland has some of the finest examples of stencil rock art in Australia. Like most rock art it is pre-historic. There is no record, but the art itself. In some places, notably Kakadu, there has been a continuous verbal record (more recently written) which tells us what the art represents.
In other places, notably the central desert, the artistic tradition that began with rock and sand motifs drawn with ochre and charcoal, has been transported to bark, canvas and even acrylic paint.
At Carnarvon, there is mystery and conjecture.
But there is also some science.
A couple of weeks ago, the road was flooded, trapping visitors for several days. It is an attractive place to be trapped.
The best thing about Carnarvon’s main galleries (and they are, indeed, galleries of natural rock) is that it requires a 6km walk along a creek lined with palms and rainforest to get to them. You do not get off a bus or out of a car and walk a short way.
You wonder at the human desire for creative expression in permanent form.
Even put at its most crass … an entry in the visitors’ book saying “”I don’t know why I walked so far to see a whole lot of Abo graffiti.” … the universality of the desire to express is apparent.
Dating the art has been difficult. The Aborigines were not as helpful as the graffiti “”artist” who chiselled “”A. Jones 1952” into the rock.
You can date engravings, especially those found below the ground level after the ground has been built up over the centuries by sediments, provided there are adjacent datable archaeological deposits. You can carbon date the charcoal from the camp fires at the level of the engraving. Pigment art is a bit more difficult. There is no reliable direct method of dating the pigments (usually ochre) above the ground, and those submerged by sediment usually quickly disappear.
Further, there is evidence of a fairly widespread practice of retouching.
Dr John Beaton excavated 3600 years of occupation deposits and concluded that earlier occupation was unlikely. Peter Keegan’s guidebook suggests the place might have been under water before then.
That makes sense, because just 25km away the ANU’s Professor John Mulvaney found evidence of occupation going back 19,000 years at Kenniff Cave in the western section of the park.
A white surveyor. W. R. Twine, described a visit to the art at Carnarvon Gorge in 1895 and saw no Aboriginal people in the Gorge or any sign of them having recently been there. He said, “”The paintings are wonderfully bright and fresh . . . indeed on repeating the operation . . . it was impossible to see which was the old and which was the new drawing.”
So there are at least some fake motifs.
In any event the art is no older than 3500 years and no younger than 100.
There are about 3500 pictures at the two main gorge galleries. Many are engravings and the rest are mostly stencilled pigment drawings, or more rarely freehand. The orange and red pigments stand out against the off-white rock. Pure white is not as successful, but there is some there.
The first gallery, the Art Gallery is about 60 metres long. It is an impressive display.
Among the engravings you will see many vulva motifs … the not-so-secret women’s business if you like. (See picture.) Nearby there are footprints and knee indentations which suggest sexual intercourse, according to Keegan.
The engravings also include depressions representing emu’s eggs.
It seems from the overlaying of artwork that engravings were done first, by carving the rock with a stick or sharp rock. Later came the stencilling … first just single objects being stencilled, mostly done by holding the object (often a hand) against the rock and blowing the pigment around it from the mouth. Then came more complex stencilling where the use of an item, like the end of a boomerang or two fingers, were used to make a composite depiction of some other item, like an emu footprint (see picture). Lastly, and more rarely, came the freehand.
There is some suggestion that the three different types were done by three successive groups of people occupying the area.
Stencils dominate the Carnarvon sites, unlike Kakadu were x-ray freehand drawing is more prevalent. The lesser use of freehand was probably because of the nature of the material … sandstone. Blowing the pigment into the porous rock gives better colour and sharper line that attempting to apply it with the fingers or some implement.
And so stencil art is the most common form in Queensland sandstone belt.
For archaeologists and anthropologists it has the advantage of accuracy. The obvious accuracy of the hand stencils means the other items are also likely to be accurate.
Interestingly, a small club that was not in use when white people came to the area and unknown by Aborigines at that time is among the stencils. Hands dominate the display, but there are coolamons (carrying baskets), shields, boomerangs and net patterns created through multiple stencilling of spread fingers. (See the main picture.)
The double joined forearm stencils might be just artistic fun, but note the double boomerangs. They must have been stencilled on the rock at the same time. This is shown by the absence of overspray from one stencil to the other. The theory given on a sign at the site is that by hunting with two boomerangs of similar size and shape, the hunter could predict the correction needed if his first throw missed. However, if the first missed, the prey would flee. Perhaps the two boomerangs were used to refine distances and corrections during practice.
Some of the artwork reveals over-painting. Hands are painted over boomerangs and boomerangs over hands. This might reveal less reverence for the earlier works than you would think if they did have long-standing sacred value, and that they might more likely be artistic expression.
Despite the 6km walk thousands of visitors come to see it each year.
The walks makes you appreciate the art more and keeps the yobbos out. There is graffiti from the 1950s, but I saw none later than 1961, indicating, one hopes, some respect for the site. Fortunately, it is quite a long walk (12km round trip) to the Art Gallery and 27km if you include Cathedral rock and the various side trips off the gorge to see waterfalls and canyons.
It is a good lesson to park managers to keep worthwhile things reasonably accessible to the determined and interested but beyond the distance willing to be walked by mindless graffitists and litter-bugs.
Six kilometres (a bit less on rough tracks) is about right. People think twice about carrying loud radios or six-packs that far. The sort of person willing to walk that far to see the rock is not likely to be the sort to deface it.
But for those who cannot walk that far and would appreciate the art, I have a suggestion for the National Gallery of Australia … the Australian Rock Art Project. Every significant piece of rock art in the country would be photographed and the result be put on display at the gallery.
Sadly, the art will not last forever. At the Cathedral Rock site, cattle and camping from past decades have spoiled some of the work. Even with that stopped, geological and meteorological forces cannot be.
Further reading: Australia’s Greatest Rock Art by Graham Walsh; The Riches of Ancient Australia by Josephine Flood; Guide to Carnarvon Gorge by Peter Keegan.
Blocklines:
Main picture:
An array of rock art at what is called the Art Gallery at Carnarvon Gorge National Park. Note the double boomerangs, the double-forearm stencils, the three-pointed stencils, and the hands at right stencilled in white, all described in the text.
Second smaller one:
Depiction of vulva engraved into the sandstone.
Third smaller one:
Stencil of club that has not known to be in use since white settlement.
Fourth (optional)
Cathedral Rock Carnarvon Gorge National Park.
Fifth (optional)
Hand stencils in the Art Gallery Carnarvon Gorge.