Djulirri | PERAHU Rock Art Documentary Series

what is he 40 for the world to know that I think one is he's the the first contact who have the indigenous people have first contact this is where it all began first contact with brows from Southeast Asia on time perhaps in the mid 1600s maybe earlier when fleets of Prowse coming down here in the mid 1700s for the stone mines and small temporary villages and Aboriginal people interacting with the new arrivals from Southeast Asia mikasa Malaya's and others quite fantastic to think about it an even more amazing that it's captured in the rock art imagine some type of Aboriginal family sitting here looking at some cows and some so look closer and closer and say European tallship oh well look at that that's a different one just continue all of these different watercraft looks a little bit quite a sight to see back then my father's uncle like my grandfather's yeah I'm youngest brother he went to Makassar and they will come back that's the same name that I've given my son Leonard they had a big fight over injunction back I think there was there was a fight between what this tribe called the mind unite people and also what they called up morale walk with people merhaba wood means island island people they all come back come back to the island and then when the McKesson came my grandfather jumped on the boat on the prow and we headed back and then never come back the first thing if you're an archaeologist you're looking for McKesson site you look for tamarind trees one they bought them over with the may introduce them to Australia there could have been a vast number of my cousin's here all at the same time yeah how many people do you think you do as delightfulness I'm coming in from over here well if you've got 300 ships you know four or five people and a crew on that you're starting to get quite a few people yeah yeah yeah the local average yeah I mentioned a thousand foreigners here that's why they all know talk about villages when they talk about the mcpeak McKesson sites they say there was a town or a village there though they must have have folks all over the the significant thing about this site is that we you know this is one of this site in India in the northern Australia that time that we the McKesson sort of used to gather the with the sea slug and yeah and I'm I'm we look proud to sort of talk about my grandfather you know about because we sort of tied into that history so I don't know what access is going to be like getting in down around this yeah so that should go down to this to the old out an old out station right here we'll be surprised if their product right through here somewhere we went back to the main road and down here and then even and it's a rough around here it's not time that it gets very rough so this is an old track that goes up here and then cuts in here as an old explosion track then you got to stop cuz this Creek is too wet and you cross the creek and walk over into to Leary obviously easiest way to get him there well father talk talked about decides you know not Pia but you know being with him over like that croaker at Goulburn you know and he talked about this place called Yuri you know where you know one day that is what he was saying one day that hopefully you will go back go back and visit our country and see you know the rock art in other sites that have been had been drawn I knew it was in that area but he has seen it any company lurking dead you know there's things that we found you know and even you know a lot of remains the skeletons you know of all people that are out there and then I knew what which place he was talking about so I just said yeah that place is called dirty cadet used to do another the main camping area where people you know countryman is to go and camp at there live on the higher ground during the wet and I think one of the caves in that in that Giri president this my my grandfather remains easy to use in one of those caves oh my god this is even better than I imagined look at the ships being on the coast you know who you know the artist seen seen it and then had that sort of mission ID or the image in the back of his mind and when he came and drew it you know to his perfection a he just you know visual arts day yeah one of the amazing things about the paintings here especially the ships is that people would have seen these tens of kilometers away and days weeks months later they came into the shelter and reproduce what they saw in exquisite detail they must have had incredible visual memories ah they did they did the the artists you know had no good memories good visualization on you know the images out there like the objects you know and put it into profession you know with with with the the drawing you know obviously this person did have a clear conscience you know and anyway they came back here he was more relaxed you know they were sort of nothing sort of hovering is mine you know yeah and some people have suggested that maybe someone brought a magazine here or some postcards and they just copied the picture from the post Carter magazine well no it's going to school in the Mission days they never we never had any any magazine now postcard I'm a knife to go to school I had we had no books we had slights so you know I mean slights and magazines and and you know postcards are a totally different yeah and also what helps confirm that is we've got these incredibly detailed paintings of really early ships the first British ships the tall ships to arrive in this area and obviously they didn't have magazines and postcards back then this ship is from the early 1800s and they would have seen it miles too the north and came back and reproduced it from memory in exquisite detail I think one of the the key things about the depictions of the contact images at jewelry in particular is the level of detail that the artists are going into so we've got ships to picture it in such a minut level of detail that clearly the people painting them have been on board the ship and knew it intimately and again that this matches up very nicely with the early historical records from the wellington range which tell us that there was relatively good relationships between the early settlements and and local Aboriginal people that they were often working with the settlers they were often going on board the ships sometimes helping on the ships and so forth so these people local Aboriginal people clearly knew the ship's very very well see on the ship that's a man standing there with both hands on the hips like this you know and that's better let's say a European origin it must have been a Bolender person one of the key aspects of the picturing change project is to reverse the gaze I guess and to look at indigenous perceptions of contact so what are they making of these Europeans that are coming in the mcKesson's that are coming in and can we see that that different perspective and this is something you don't get in other records generally so we have this wonderful contemporary account of indigenous feelings about responses to interactions with non-indigenous people and that is really quite unique so Ronald this is an amazing painting of a ship yeah it is well see not none of the the people on board actually got hats on so they actually over European origin and you know the old hole in the hips Hey so all of them have their hands on yes yeah even if the the captain of the of the ship and I has one hand on the hip yeah and the other one on Hyundai on the wheel and even though even the crews dead here and then what pipes hey this block smoking what do you think they have their hands on their hips I don't know the are you are you recall when our when I was a kid that them when the missionaries to come out and to talk to Laura well their fellow countrymen they that had the hip unpopular and they said of talking to them overlooking them must have been I'm the superior over you you know I'm the big boss so that's the way that in the paintings you can tell which are paintings of the European yeah and we treat each other from the indigenous here when I first walked into jewelry I think I think a lot of people have the same reaction in that I was absolutely lost for words when I first walked into jewelry I guess you feel like you've stumbled across something that that in a way is secret and something that you know you meant to be there because you're there with the traditional owners but you feel like you've walked into somebody's conversation and that you're eavesdropping on somebody's conversation and that that is a slightly uncomfortable feeling to that as you explore that conversation with people like Ronald and can talk to him about it and hear his stories you feel a lot better about it here we have a picture or one of those McKesson proud so this is one of the one of the vessel that my grandfather's youngest brother went with the fleet back to Makassar and didn't return yeah and here we have a similar one with the yellow ocher that's one day another one more similar to this one with it with the tripod actually goes down then the ship itself like here this is the baseline here yeah this is where we took that beeswax sample couple years ago and we got we did radiocarbon dating and we got an age of between 16 24 and 16 74 all right so that's a minimum age that's an age for the beeswax pellet that we sampled and the painting is underneath which means it's that much older again and what's really exciting is that that is the oldest date for any contact rock art in the whole of Australia I think it's amazing yeah amazing to see that you know our ancestors that actually lived here you know have had that contact you know you know we do with boo Dacian a lot of people think that my cousins and other people from Southeast Asia didn't arrive here until the mid 1700s what this shows is that people from Southeast Asia were here at least a hundred years earlier and that means that the painting that one of your ancestors did is a really important historic document that adds a new dimension to the history of this area this is it's a dogged killer white Dalia killer you can see the actual like the shape of a killer Doug Atkins caught that bit of a head up here and then head up here obviously three people sitting in the fourth one and this fifth one here actually speared Spears something and he's holding on to a rope and this rope it's a long rope it goes all the way up here those appear you know it's this fish type thing here that actually speared so obviously that is a you go yeah we you know which is more modern now we've got the the bolts now with the outboard motor we speed you go we sort of overrun it and then and then we hit we we throw tip him you know a tip TM he doing upside down and then hang on to his flippers and then upside down and he can he drowns himself but previously when they're to do the Kino there's to hang on to the rope then there's to wait till his turtle all these dugong actually completed a roll a suicide wrote and then he tangle himself with the Robin and I did drain drowned himself yeah that's how they would they'll catch it and do you think people used these paintings to for teaching for teaching the younger generation yeah they use this as part of the parable the children's education teaching them about you know her hunt yeah like I'm gonna update see where they spin a crocodile up there that's part of showing and then the other one where he's swimming for the dump the tortoise I think this tool line see it sort of indicate that it's a it's a creek you know at jewelry there is an amazing array of contact rock art and I'll just give you a few examples there's a depiction for example of of European of a European man with a beard with hats on very often they've got they depicted with pipe smoking pipes and in one circumstance the the depiction is actually in profile so the side of the head is depicted and we're very confident that we'll be able to link those up with at least particular contact events for example missionaries ships captains and so forth so there's it's amazing evidence for individuals you know very detailed evidence for individuals being in the area there are also depictions of of a plane a biplane a bicycle this bicycle could be linked to an explorer named Rico who was coming through Arnhem Land in the early 1900s again we've more research we might be able to match that up they will say a person a sort of a European in this area that I was actually taking photograph a photographer taking photograph of Buffalo shooting yes so they might have they probably seen a bicycle running around there a bike and they brought back and then recorded it from here the artist must have seen a fight where these two people came in contact yeah when flatten one or not knocked in math Hey and obviously that's other fighters too which sticks here and somebody goes speed this block or a rumor through a spear and spear this block here and then there's some numbers there yeah one two and three so what do you think they put those three numbers there those numerous could be you know from the mission when they somebody went to the mission school came back in this probably put that put that in there this is there's a block here with a clap stick that's a person me with a did you know and this is all people dancing so is that a ceremony do you think or yeah it's like a library this is an archive for us you know it tells us a story about what has been what has been saying I give that you get the Prowse and then the battleships and this is actually what the old people have seen and they recorded that for for us you know to say to reflect back as they are all right so obviously there has been some connection you know some interaction between you know the Balon des and and the Aboriginal people of this country but beyond that maybe you after doing the research it maybe we can find out that obviously there were other traders before the British or the Dutch you know landed in this this part of the part of the count I'll have a look at the Spade sorry yeah it's quite large the other beads I found about much smaller than that well I've seen them in Indonesia obviously there would have been some you know dialogue with the McKesson and and like my people because you know they say show of evidence that if you thought look in the art you know up in the rock house you'd find some glass ways you know sort of some poor trees you know some stuff that were in exchange some some metal implements this is a tin lid for a matchbox team they are non safety matches you know they would being this long so we're actually trying to have a look for some McKesson um pottery that we found here last time I was here what you pigs just put your camera and the kangaroo through there that's great we found a collapse platform in jewelry and Ronald would sit there and say oh hang on I I know a story about that my dad had a story and it was before his time I'm that the artist that actually did a lot of those um the artwork what it was actually a paraplegic and the the family I think this is one of his hobby because a lot of a lot of the countrymen you know they stayed up in Indian Scotland and they used to carry him you know on a man-made stretcher and then put scaffolding and then he did order the artworks here can he do it and then they would camp there you know tempte food yeah till you know the lot of the arts were completed but he was like it was one of these the main artists but there were others too that actually did you know the odd ones he got a lot of my like my generation that they were more of a nomadic people and they sort of moved from Camp to camp so this is one of a journey that they come through here and obviously they spent here maybe I don't know two to three months maybe four months depending on on food on the food chain and then they would move on so what they would do is like do a complete horseshoe come around here and go right back to the end of the East Wellington range and then come down and then come along the coast and live along the coast and then do one complete circle and by the time they'd get up here again this vicinity you know that would be like me that come up I take shelter so that what they would see out there that bring it back here then during the between the dry I mean the wet day would record it we do have a a library and out here which is sort of archived that you know we can tell what really happened you know and and it like put put the stories together it's like a jigsaw puzzle you know and we still not even completed the puzzle yet yeah make pie oh it's a mug like a black and white a but you've just noticed that when we came to with no bird and a lot of them now so I was sitting earlier telling the story the more people I think they sort of acknowledging that you know we're not here is intruder day goodness good feeling you know the original artists that have painted the paintings would have been pleased you know that they their paintings exactly not only contained in one little area exactly calling Morris as a global thing and I think even you know even going to the thing you can sort of sense that the spirits are at their you know supporting this whole thing and you know like L our belief is that if they he's you know that the if you get the the spiritual side of it you know behind you you know that it's gonna work gelareh is fascinating and an amazing contact site and diverse and surrounded by older rock art and just blew me away really so I'm very excited to get back out there and start recording a single story with this particular site it's take the HD the original and probably the oldest what a wonderful day amazing sight it's one of the top sites in Arnhem Land while the top sites in the country and in terms of contact area draw cart it's probably the best it's the holy grail of contact rock art sites

Channel: protectrockart

Views: 17,302

Rating: 4.8232045 out of 5

Keywords: rock art, PERAHU, Wellington Range, Griffith University (College/University), Northern Territory, Aboriginal Australians (Ethnicity)

Id: EWzInNwgdoI

Length: 28min 53sec (1733 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 07 2014