Lost World of the Kimberley: Extraordinary New Glimpses of Australia's Ice Age Ancestors

325 Pages·2006·10.16 MB·English

by  Ian Wilson

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IAN WILSON has been a professional author since 1979 and has published
more than twenty books, including The Turin Shroud, Jesus: The Evidence,
and The Blood and the Shroud. He emigrated to Australia in 1995 and lives in
Brisbane.
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First published in 2006
Copyright © Ian Wilson 2006
All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publisher. TheAustralian Copyright Act 1968(the Act) allows a maximum ofone chapter
or 10 per cent ofthis book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational
institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body
that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL)
under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
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Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
National Library ofAustralia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Wilson, Ian, 1941- .
Lost world ofthe Kimberley.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 1 74114 391 8.
1. Rock paintings - Western Australia - Kimberley. 2.
Aboriginal Australians - Western Australia - Kimberley -
History. 3. Kimberley (W.A.) - Antiquities. I. Title.
759.0113099414
Set in 12/15 pt Bell MT Regular by Midland Typesetters, Victoria
Printed by South Wind Production, Singapore
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS
Author’s preface vii
Chapter 1 Drop-in at Reindeer Rock 1
Chapter 2 Early rock art encounters 10
Chapter 3 Modern-day encounters 28
Chapter 4 Twenty-nine in a boat 45
Chapter 5 Hands of time 55
Chapter 6 ‘Mother’ and her ‘dogs’ 66
Chapter 7 ‘Breadbaskets’ and puppets 84
Chapter 8 Boat design pioneers 102
Chapter 9 Time of the spears 115
Chapter 10 Odes to the boomerang 135
Chapter 11 A Bradshaw ‘Lost City’? 148
Chapter 12 Follow that river 171
Chapter 13 Putting people to the paintings 186
Chapter 14 Putting dates to the paintings 205
Chapter 15 Putting genes to the paintings 221
Chapter 16 Tracing where they went 241
Chapter 17 Window on the world’s oldest culture 257
Picture credits 279
Notes 281
Bibliography 299
Index 308
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AUTHOR’S PREFACE
In 1994 my wife Judith and I visited Australia for the first time at the
invitation of the Sydney Writers’ Festival. In the course of a brief but
unforgettable tour we so fell in love with the country and its lifestyle that we
applied to emigrate, and after due process moved house from Bristol,
England to a pleasant suburb of Brisbane, Australia.
It was a decision that many of our friends and acquaintances greeted
with near disbelief. ‘But you’re a historian!’ they exclaimed. ‘What on earth
are you doing going to a country that has no history?’ Now, ten years on,
perhaps this book will help set to rights some of those all-too-prevalent
misconceptions.
This said, the extremely ancient, enigmatic and so talented paintings
that form my subject are not of the stuff immediately to be put on every
future tourist itinerary. Even by Australian standards the still scant-explored
Kimberley region where the paintings are located is remote, vast, and almost
completely lacking in any of the normal tourist amenities. And as anyone
who manages the trip quickly appreciates, that is the way it also needs to stay.
But these paintings exist in literally tens of thousands across an area
almost the size of Spain. And an awareness and even partial understanding
of them is arguably fundamental to our understanding of the whole history of
humankind in its Ice Age infancy. Unless there is some fatal flaw to the
dating of these paintings, back at a time when most of Europe lay deep
beneath ice sheets a people in Australia were creating elaborate garments for
themselves, building ocean-going boats, cultivating root crops and enjoying
a rich ceremonial life. Not least, they were creating figurative paintings of
verve and talent that surpasses all other of the world’s rock art, and would
not be seen again until the rise of the ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern
civilisations. Though in tackling this subject I have strayed into the field of
the prehistorian, rather than the historian, in this particular instance I make
no apology. The paintings in question are so full of details of the remote era
from which they derive that they actually represent a far more vital and vivid
documentary source than could any dry or dusty chronicle.
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LOST WORLD OF THE KIMBERLEY
Two most redoubtable women qualify as equal first among the individ-
uals to whom this book is indebted. My wife Judith has been at my side
through 38 years of marriage and 28 years of my book writing, but this par-
ticular book has undoubtedly demanded more from her than anything
previously. Hanging out of helicopters and crawling beneath narrow rock
overhangs to photograph paintings in wild terrain is not for the faint-
hearted. But Judith coped magnificently to create the great majority of
photographs reproduced in this book, as well as making interpretative
drawings, checking the text, and innumerable other chores. No less invalu-
able has been the help of archaeologist Lee Scott-Virtue of Kimberley
Specialists, Kununurra. Most cheerfully and capably she took on the tasks of
being our expedition leader, guide, cook, bush lore specialist and driver
throughout the full-scale four-wheel drive expedition that was demanded
by our need to view the remotely located paintings at first hand. She has
similarly been a tower of support and strength throughout.
Amongst others to whom I am indebted are Joc Schmiechen for
checking the book manuscript, directing me to important sources that I had
missed, and very freely volunteering his wealth of first-hand knowledge and
photographs; Russell Willis of Willis’s Walkabouts for generously allowing
use of his photographs and data in Chapter 12; John Bradshaw for supplying
the photograph of his great-uncle Joseph Bradshaw, and for checking the
chapter describing Bradshaw’s discovery; Adrian Parker for supplying
the photograph of the panel discovered by Bradshaw; Slingair helicopter
pilot Tim Anders for introducing us to the previously undocumented rock
painting sites of Reindeer Rock and Wullumara Creek; Bruce and Robyn
Ellison of the Faraway Bay Bush Camp for making it possible for us to access
hitherto undocumented rock art sites on the Kimberley’s north-west coast;
Steve McIntosh of Faraway Bay for guiding us to these sites; and Pawel
Valde-Nowak of the Institute of Archaeology, Kraków, Poland, for providing
difficult-to-obtain data on Poland’s unique Ice Age boomerang. My warmest
thanks, also, to the following people for innumerable other crucial points of
assistance: sculptor John Robinson of Yeovil, Somerset, England; Len Zell,
author of the excellent Guide to the Kimberley Coast; Ian Levy; Christopher
Chippindale; John Taylor of Tasmania; John Presser of Tasmania; David
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AUTHOR’S PREFACE
Owen, author of Thylacine; Dr Stephen Wroe of the University of Sydney;
Tim McIntyre of the University of Queensland; Dr Michael D. Coe of Yale
University; Jean-Michel Chazine of the University of Marseille; Dr John
Prag from Manchester Museum; Dr Robert Paddle of the Australian
Catholic University; Dr Lawrence Blair; Dean Goodgame; Barrie Schwortz;
Ju Ju ‘Burriwee’ Wilson; photographer Peter Eve; Aboriginal artist Warren
Djorlom; Helen Bunning; Grahame Walsh; Nadia Donnelly of Kununurra
Visitor Centre; Sheryl Backhouse; Barry Hart; James Sokoll; Ian Thomson;
Vrony Kern; Ian Holmes; Philip Courtenay of ADFAS; Adriennne
Alexander; Natasha Pearson of Lord’s Kakadu and Arnhemland Safaris;
Conrad Stacey; Jean-Claude Bragard; Petra Collier; Brisbane City Library (in
particular the ever-helpful staff of our local mobile library); University of
Queensland Library; the Mitchell Library, Sydney. And not least among all
these, Patrick Gallagher, Managing Director of Allen & Unwin, Sydney, for
giving the project the vital push-start ofa book commission, and for being so
patient and understanding during its long gestation.
Authors can make all kinds of gaffes and mistakes in putting together a
book manuscript, and this author is certainly no exception. A good publisher
provides a suitably literate and eagle-eyed copy editor to spot these errors. In
fulfilling this all too often unsung task, Karen Ward has not only been one
of the very best whom I have come across, she has also made a number of
helpful constructive suggestions. I am deeply grateful to Karen and to Allen
& Unwin editor Jeanmarie Morosin for all their care and their patience
steering this book towards publication.
In the case of my attempted interpretations of the Bradshaw paintings,
whatever errors these may contain will be entirely from my own shortcom-
ings, and I will welcome all suggested corrections to these. The intention of
this book is not in any way to provide some sort ofdefinitive authority on the
subject. Rather, it is to open it up to the widest possible, intelligent debate.
Ian Wilson
Moggill, Queensland
July 2005
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The Mitchell Falls during the late Dry season