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.

All our adventures had been on Amarak land, lying east of the East Alligator River across from Kakadu National Park. The Amarak lived traditionally on their land until the 1950s, and the land had seen little use until Mount Borradaile was established in the 1980s.

Given that the Amarak lived on the land until relatively recently, there were many paintings and habitation places around the property that are well preserved. We were able to see quite a few in the four days we were there. Some were ‘mens business’ places – mens ceremonial places – as you can tell from these set of paintings – they’re all of busty women!

Others were of a more spiritual bent. This giant three metre long serpent was drawn on the roof of an overhang.

Being so close to the coast, the serpent had many shark/crocodile like features.

And was spectacular close-up.