24rd November (Thursday)

We took a cultural tour in a 4WD vehicle into Arnhem Land. This is an extremely large area and five times larger than Kakadu National Park and was offered to the aborigines as a reserve exclusively for them. The area we explored includes large areas of valleys that will be flooded when the wet season starts in earnest. 

Arnhem Land

The whole place will be closed down within 2 weeks of our visit. We visited many areas where the aborigines over the years have drawn on the rock faces. Some of the art work stretching back over 6000 years. There is also one painting which is estimated to be 100,000 years and is quite a mystery as to its origin. 

Aboriginal rock art

We were fortunate to see a female wallaroo, which is unique to the Arnhem mountainous region and not found anywhere else. The males are black and the females grey.

Wallaroo

While in the region we also visited the Injalak Art Centre in Gunbalanya that has been set up to help the local community develop new skills particularly screen printing.

Artist at the Injalak Art Centre