ANCIENT ART TRAIL

DICK EUSSEN RECALLS AN EARLIER TIME WHEN HE FIRST DISCOVERED ANCIENT INDIGENOUS ROCK ART AND DETAILS WHERE AND HOW YOU CAN VIEW IT FOR YOURSELF

- DICK EUSSEN

THE whole of Australia, especially in areas with sandstone ranges, has hidden art galleries left behind by the first people who once lived here. They created incredible undercover art galleries of their world including games, animals and dreamtime gods, and left behind the handprints of bored children in cave shelters when the rains tumbled down and the storm gods roamed the skies with displays of lighting and thunder that struck fear in the hearts of humans.

It's all recorded in the art friezes, including one that I came across in western Arnhem Land depicting a lightning strike that killed a woman. But many are of hunters spearing animals, warriors engaged in battle with crocodiles, snakes and fish.

I have been fascinated by rock art since I first viewed one near Mount Isa in 1961. The discovery led to others nearby and elsewhere in the ancient spinifex-clad ranges of the CloncurryMount Isa mineral field, a region of sandstone ranges dating back to the Precambrian period that stretches into the western Gulf country and continues into the NT.

I lived in Kakadu for a decade, a place of legendary dreamtime beings that are well documented in hundreds of rock-art galleries where the monsoon woodlands fringe the Arnhem Land Escarpment and its many outliers. None were open to the public in the early days, there was no policing with people exploring the region at will. We respected the art of the ancients and none of it was damaged when Kakadu National Park was declared in 1979, which also signalled the go-ahead for the Ranger Uranium Mine where I was employed first as the Information and Housing Officer, and later in the emergency services section.

My spare time was spent fishing, hunting and exploring the hidden rock art sites where I took thousands of photographs, 35mm slides, now superseded by the digital age of photography.