![\"Cahills](\"https:\/\/s1.at.atcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/iStock-468200726.jpg\")
Cahill Crossing along Alligator River. Aptly named because of its crocodile population. Located in the Arnhem Land region of NT.<\/p><\/div>\n
Now, sitting on a sandstone ledge at Mount Borradaile, I gaze at a mulberry red Tasmanian devil with jagged teeth underneath a large yellow sting ray. Nearby are two punishment spearings and a rainbow serpent creation ancestor. I can scarcely believe I am one\u00a0of the few people to have seen this art since\u00a0its rediscovery.<\/p>\n\n
Davidson\u2019s Arnhem Land<\/a> Safari\u2019s senior guide\u00a0Clare Wallwork and her partner Roger Johnsson discovered these art-filled shelters just\u00a0last year.<\/p>\n\n Today, their excitement is still palpable as we walk along the escarpment pocked\u00a0with the dogged roots of fig trees and spiky pandanas palms. A lime green wetland stretches to the horizon.<\/p>\n Davidson\u2019s Arnhem Land Safari\u2019s senior guide\u00a0Clare Wallwork surveys figures in headdresses.<\/p><\/div>\n In 1986 Charlie Mungulda, senior Indigenous owner of the Ulba Bunij clan, asked former buffalo hunter Max Davidson to open a safari camp to show a select few white folk his country.<\/p>\n The camp at Davidson’s Arnhem Land Safaris, NT<\/p><\/div>\n Davidson and his guides have found more than a dozen rock art galleries that archaeologist Josephine Flood describes as \u201cunrivalled in terms of artistic quality, quantity, colourfulness and excellent state of preservation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n Mount Borradaile is magical. The art in\u00a0the rock shelters tells stories that plumb tens\u00a0of\u00a0thousands of years\u00a0in a landscape that still brims with crocodiles, barramundi, and courting brolgas. It feels like you have pierced the curtain of\u00a0the\u00a021st century and\u00a0returned to\u00a0prehistoric times.<\/p>\n Discovering rock art at Mt Borradaile’s catacombs.<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so pristine yet Indigenous Australians lived here for thousands of years,\u201d says Wallwork. \u201cAboriginal groups worked within the environment yet we Europeans seem to work against it. Everywhere you walk it feels like they left only yesterday.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \u201cRock art offers a window into the past,\u201d says Professor Paul Tacon, Chair in Rock Art Research at Queensland\u2019s Griffith University.<\/p>\n\n \u201cIt is all about the history of human experience and the imaginative telling of stories. It shows everything from what extinct animals looked like to how climate change impacted social life.\u201d<\/p>\n Arnhem Land’s Mount Borradaile houses some of the best Indigenous rock art around.<\/p><\/div>\n For traditional owners, the art tells the story of their country and their culture. More important than the paintings themselves, which are often superimposed on each other, the act of painting connected Aboriginal artists with their creation ancestors.<\/p>\n\n \u201cAustralian rock art is so remarkable firstly because there is so much of it,\u201d says Professor Jo McDonald, director of the Centre for Rock Art Research and Management at the University of Western Australia. \u201cAustralia is unique because its entire occupation was by hunter gatherers and this history is beautifully recorded in the rock art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n She adds, \u201cThe French promote their relatively few sites, such as Lascaux (whose art dates back 20,000 years), as part of their cultural identity. Australia has 100,000 known sites with incredible diversity and complexity yet few Australians know much about them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n Indeed, the enormity of the legacy of Aboriginal culture \u2013 its complexity and spiritual depth \u2013 is barely understood by most of us. From\u00a0finger scratching deep in the Nullarbor caves and coded petroglyphs on the Burrup Peninsula to the vast swath of rock paintings across the continent, every type of artistic endeavour practiced by ancient cultures has been\u00a0produced here.<\/p>\n\n \u201cThe detail, freshness, range of colour and age of Australian rock art make it unequalled worldwide,\u201d says Cambridge PhD, Jamie Hampson, who recently moved to the UWA Centre\u00a0for Rock Art Research + Management because, \u201cas an archaeologist with an anthropological approach to rock art, Australia is a wonderful place to work because there are still Indigenous descendants who can provide so\u00a0much cultural understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n In spite of extensive studies, it is still extremely difficult to pinpoint the age of rock art because most organic pigments cannot be carbon dated. A\u00a0rare charcoal drawing on the Central Arnhem Land Plateau has been radiocarbon-dated to 28,000 years, making it the oldest painting in Australia and among the oldest in the world with reliable date evidence \u2013 but the engravings are probably much older.<\/p>\n Davidson’s Arnhem Land Safaris<\/a>\u00a0at Mount Borradaile, which can be visited both in the wet and dry seasons, offers a remarkable body of rock art including an enormous rainbow serpent, expansive contact galleries, early naturalistic animals, dynamic figures and X-ray art.<\/p>\n An Indigenous guide at Injalak Hill, also in west Arnhem Land explaining the rock art.<\/p><\/div>\n For a complete indigenous experience in Arnhem Land, visit the site of Injalak near the community of Oenpelli where Aboriginal guides describe the stories behind the great variety of paintings at Injaluk Hill.<\/p>\n\n You can also buy stunning weavings and bark paintings at the art centre. Entry permit required (injalak.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n![\"Davidson\u2019s](\"https:\/\/s1.at.atcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Mount-Borradaile-Clare-Wallwork-looking-at-figures-in-headdresses.jpg\")
![\"Davidson's](\"https:\/\/s1.at.atcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Accommodation-26-of-48.jpg\")
![\"Discovering](\"https:\/\/s1.at.atcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Mt-Borradaile-discovering-the-art-in-the-catacombs.jpg\")
![\"Arnhem](\"https:\/\/s1.at.atcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/mount-borradaile-art-5.jpg\")
See Arnhem Land for yourself<\/h2>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/s1.at.atcdn.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/An-indigenous-guide-at-Injaluk-Hill-explaining-the-rock-art.jpg\")