At the request of Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation (GLaWAC), a team of world-class scientists, researchers, and land managers from Monash University, the University of Queensland, the University of Adelaide, the University of Melbourne, the University of Waikato, the University of New England, the University of Savoy, together with Rock Art Australia have partnered to further explore the area around an unearthed ritual site in Clogg’s Cave, Gippsland.

These findings, of what appear to be ritual fireplaces are believed to date back at least 12,000 years, as they reflect the ritual installations documented in nineteenth-century ethnography.

For further reading about the discovery of the ritual fireplaces, you can download “Archaeological evidence of an ethnographically documented Australian Aboriginal ritual dated to the last ice age”, co-authored by (including) Russell Mullett and Bruno David, in Nature Human Behaviour.

Dr Louise Shewan, Senior Research Fellow in Archaeological Sciences, in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is leading an extraordinary effort to digitally preserve Indigenous rock paintings in the eastern Kimberley. The ‘VR team’ visited the remote Barking Owl camp site in July 2022, camping alongside the Drysdale River. There, they captured thousands of ultra-high-resolution photographs using cameras and drones, which have since been turned into 3-dimensional computer models that faithfully capture the rock shape to sub-cm accuracy, and the art panel paintings and other surface features to sub-mm accuracy and high colour accuracy. The 3-D models can be viewed on computer screens, projectors, and most importantly for this project, Virtual Reality (VR) headsets.

In July this year, staff and board members from Rock Art Australia joined members of the team and travelled to Kalumburu in the Kimberley, to meet with the community. Part of this visit included spending time with the students from the Kalumburu Remote Community School – one of Australia’s most remote schools – to share some of the results of the project.

At the school, Dr Shewan met with Principal Simon Duncan and organised four classes of primary, middle years and senior school students to explore Kimberley rock art and the Drysdale River environment in VR.  Pairing up, the students shared the headsets and enthusiastically viewed a series of immersive 360-degree movies and 3D models of rock art galleries and the landscape around the sites.

The students were able to stand on a sandbar in the middle of the Drysdale River and recline in a rock shelter to view exquisite Wanjina images painted on the rocky ceiling, while hundreds of insects chirped in the background. The students could also view a panel of Gwion paintings and navigate across the galleries and zoom into the fine details of the artwork.

Dr Louise Shewan and Dr David Barnes (Inertial Frames) are planning to capture more rock art sites to create further VR content. They will also spend time with the teachers and share more of the VR content and how to use it in the classroom setting.

Rock Art Australia is thrilled to support this project and inspire the next generation of scientists and future rock art site stewards.

The Aboriginal Heritage Office (AHO) is an award-winning initiative that continues to set high standards for how local NSW governments can work towards improved management and protection of Aboriginal heritage.

The AHO vision is to help protect irreplaceable Aboriginal heritage sites across northern Sydney and Strathfield for generations to come through an Aboriginal Heritage Management Framework at the local government level. This framework incorporates site management, education, and community liaison. The AHO aims to be a successful role model for local governments across NSW.

There are around 900 recorded Aboriginal sites in the partner councils of the AHO, including Lane Cove, Ku-ring-gai, North Sydney, Northern Beaches, Willoughby, and Strathfield. These sites encompass art sites, engravings, burials, artefact scatters, grinding grooves, and extensive shell middens. They hold national and international significance, with some sites dating from 4,000 to 30,000 years old.

Urban sites are heavily affected by modern and historic dense population traffic, pollution, and development. There is a deficit of information about Aboriginal cultural history across northern Sydney, making many of these sites the only remaining record of a well-resourced and culturally rich population.

The Aboriginal Heritage Office has spent 25 years ground-truthing and recording Aboriginal sites across the northern part of Sydney and Strathfield. The project aims to create a database to preserve information regarding these rare and fragile sites.

Having this information in a searchable database with privacy layers has the potential to impact the ability of the AHO and partner Council staff to make appropriate decisions when working on areas of sensitivity. The database also has the potential for greater engagement with members of the Aboriginal community and researchers.

A decade ago Traditional Owners in the Kimberley were asking us ‘how old is the rock art?’  The lack of reliable dates for both recent and old art in the Kimberley and the myriad questions raised by TOs, archaeologists, geochronologists, and historians amongst others led to what has become the most innovative rock art dating project of its kind. Never has dating rock art been attempted on this scale and with this wealth of expertise and dating techniques.

The Dating project, now in its 2^nd phase, applies new knowledge of complex processes on sandstone surfaces across the north Kimberley and uses an innovative combination of four scientific dating methods developed in the earlier work.

An extended dating project “An absolute timescale for the Aboriginal rock art of the Kimberley region – landscape processes and multiple chronometers” follows the pioneering work undertaken in the first Kimberley Rock Art Dating project (2014-2017).

The project will run for four years from 2018 and has been awarded a major Linkage Grant by the Australian Research Council with support from Rock Art Australia.

A large group of researchers and Traditional Owners carried out fieldwork on the Barton and Drysdale River. Approximately 160 new rock art sites were documented in collaboration with Kimberley Visions and sampled for dating in this area which had not previously been surveyed.