One of the most interesting walls of art were ones that depicted contact with outsiders.

Among the hand prints and animal drawings was a sailing ship. The groups in this region would have known about white men very early on, first perhaps from the Makassan fishermen from Sulawesi, Indonesia, and then perhaps from seeing passing Dutch and Portuguese ships.

By the time the English came, they were very familiar with ships, as seen from the wall below.

Here, the artist has painted a steam ship in great detail.

The artist has even tried to copy writing (and almost got it).

They didn’t know that the outsiders would end up changing their way of life forever. Now we only have these remnants to admire and wonder.