Long Art Site Walk: the Catacombs
This morning we were offered the option of short (1 km or so) or long (3-4 kms) walks to see rock art. Driver Ian was very concerned that we didn’t extend ourselves beyond our capabilities, explaining that the long walk involved some rock scrambling. This was because the waters hadn’t receded enough to allow the flatter more grassland route usually taken for this walk. I was initially wary. The length didn’t concern me, but I DO NOT WANT TO FALL! However, I had asked yesterday’s walk leader, the lovely Danielle, about it, and she said that the scrambling just required the ability to take big steps, that is, being able to lift our knees high-ish, but that there was always something to hang onto. That convinced me that I could do it. It’s the having to balance in precarious spots that scares me! Ian, though, had done a good job, and the long walk group ended up with only 7 instead of, our guide said, the usual 15 to 20!
Ian also exhorted us to stop walking whenever we wanted to look at or photograph anything (advice one of my reading group friends will understand very well) and to look after each other! He was like a mother hen – a good one, though.
Our guide this morning was not Danielle, who was flying that day to the big smoke, aka Darwin, for her couple of days off, but Tina Jensen. (Using her last name because she’s a poet. What writer doesn’t want their name known?) A lovely woman, who follows a fairly peripatetic life. I noticed that she had a tattoo on her inner arm that simply said “No ordinary life”. Her personal mantra I guess.
Our walk took us across the Cooper Creek floodplain. This Creek runs into the East Alligator River, which forms the border with Kakadu National Park. The Catacombs are so named because, although naturally formed, they include burial grounds. We saw many human remains, some still wrapped in the traditional paperbark, but of course didn’t photograph them. The Mt Borradaile lease is listed as a sacred site, in fact, largely because it is a huge cemetery. It also has over 1000 pieces of precontact art.
En route to the art sites we saw several plants, including:
- Salmon gum (eucalyptus tintinnans)
- Lovely flowering wattle (acacia leptocarpa, we believe)
- Snake lily
- Trigger plant
- Milkwood: the one I’ve written about before, which indigenous people used to make the dug-out canoes as taught to them by the Macassans. Tina explained, as had Ian previously, that the Macassans traded with, and taught skills to indigenous Australians, but also brought tobacco, alcohol and diseases, like syphilis
- Cypress (?) grass, used to make both fine point and broader-brush paintbrushes
Tina introduced us to a special use of arboreal termite poop! You break off a chunk, light it, and bob’s your uncle you have incense that doubles as mosquito repellent.
At the Art site/s
We visited two main art sites, both comprising an extensive series of caves, which we were able to wander about, relatively freely. Some of the things we saw/learnt:
- a female figure with bulges on her ankles indicated mourning, but she had spikes on her elbows which suggest lightning ancestral beings. Lightning man is called Namarrk(g)on by the local Kunwinjku people. In their story, he and his wife are parents to Leichhardt’s Grasshopper, which is at full size in wet season. It rubs its elbows together to help create thunder and lightning. (We’ve seen a lightning man from the same story at Nourlangie Rock in Kakadu.)
- contact art, including a boat, buffalo hunter, guns, decorated hands like lacy gloves, and blue art (using Reckitts Blue!). We’ve seen some of these (a boat, a lady glove, in Kakadu. Of course contact art is easier to date.)
- evidence of environmental change. We didn’t see it, but there are images of thylacines here (the now extinct Tasmanian tiger), which date to 4,000 plus years ago at which time the dingo arrived!
We saw so much art – all styles, multi-layered in places, and by themselves in others. We saw one work that had been “framed” which is unusual, our guide said. We saw dingoes, fruit bats, crabs, fish, snakes, wallabies, birds, figures – and more. I think we all felt like kids in a candy store – overwhelmed with choice! Tina didn’t talk a lot about dating, as Danielle had, but we had some grasp by then.
But now, remember my foreshadowing regarding my Gidgee Gidgee seed necklace? Well, saw the plant here in the cave environs. It’s a toxic seed containing “abrin”, and had several uses, one being to induce abortions, and another for murder by Kadaitcha men. Tina told a story about a woman on one of her tours who had a collection of them in her hands. When she reminded the woman of their toxicity, the woman indicated that it was her “exit strategy” in the likely event that her husband would go first! I don’t know what happened next! My necklace will probably “appear” one more time in the blog – watch out for it…
We saw more natural phenomena around or in the caves too, including Ghost and micro bats (impossible to photograph in the dark cave), a vine picturesquely called Flagilarium, and a pretty Orange Lacewing Butterfly.
Lunch was a BBQ at the “Pig hunting site”, a large covered area with permanent barbecues. The meat was marinated kangaroo, beef sausages, and buffalo patties – and chicken skewers for gf people. This was served with freshly cooked damper, potato and green salads, and real billy tea. The lodge’s chef is, currently anyhow, a young Texan woman, and this was probably the best meal she cooked during our stay. It is stereotyping to assume Texans know their barbecue! Dessert comprised slices of watermelon. Just right.
And, just in case we were suffering from withdrawal symptoms, there was a rock wall at this location featuring rock art in the Dynamic Figures style.
Back to the lodge for an afternoon rest
On the way back, Tina told us more stories about the area, including that the pretty Turkey Bush (we included a pic in an earlier post) once provided wood for boomerangs. However, there have been no boomerangs in this area for around 4,500 yrs. Ian told us this too. It’s because of sea level rise, which meant that this area changed from being more arid grassland to woodland. Boomerangs don’t work so well in treed landscapes!
It was nice to have a quiet afternoon – and it was particularly lovely as we were treated to a visitor – a young Brown Goshawk we think, as it had the bird-of-prey beak, yellow eyes and legs, and heavily striated breast – but it flew off before we could get a pic. Darn!
Sunset Billabong Cruise
I think for many of us, the billabong cruise here, and the wetlands cruise at Murwangi, were among the highlights of the tour. Tina Jensen, who’d been our morning walk guide, did the afternoon cruise too. And my she worked hard. She steered the barge, spotted birds and animals for us, told stories, sang a song she written about the story of Mt Borradaile’s name, and served refreshments (wine/beer/softdrinks with cheese, dips and crackers.)
On the way out to the billabong, she told us we’d pass through five ecosystems: Savannah, Stone country, Monsoon rainforest, Paperbark swamp, Floodplain until the Billabong. I think I got that right. Sometimes my note taking struggled to keep up!
The barge was very low to the water, and took all 19 of us, plus Tina (but without Driver Ian who had the day off). It was so peaceful gliding quietly across the water, through paperbarks and into more open waters. Over the two hours we spotted, among other critters:
- Female Australasian darter
- Little egret
- Crocodiles
- Azure kingfisher
- Jacana
- Magpie geese (which apparently travel in 3s, male, its partner and her sister, due apparently to an over-supply of females. Magpie Geese have apparently been here for over 60,000 years)
- Masked lapwing
- Whistling kites
- Radjah shelduck
Tina also pointed out various landforms, such as the creatively named First Hill and Mt Borradaile itself.
The cruise ended with a gorgeous sunset, after which Tina got us all off the barge, and drove us the 20 mins or so back to the lodge. At one stage we had a young dingo in front of the vehicle (I have no idea what you call the various vehicles we got around these places in!) trying to outrun us. A rare thing, Tina said.
After that it was dinner – barramundi I think! – followed by an early night in readiness for next day’s 6.30am breakfast!
That’s really special to see that ancient rock art:)
Thanks Lisa … it truly is. And the more you see it, the more it – sort of – starts to fall into place!
Loved it all! The commentary, the still pics, and the wonderful videos! Lots of critters! You KNOW I love that! I loved the sounds also. Thought we could probably use some of the termite poop here in Arkansas – although we have not been actually plagued by mosquitos so far – but we keep worrying that they ARE coming! Loved Tina’s original lyrics sung to
Gilligan’s Island no less. =) She certainly seemed like another good guide. I did see the sailboat without the sail on the
pre contact after contact wall art.
Carter calling me to dinner.
More later
Knew you’d like all the critters Trudy … and Tina’s song. We’ve had such great guides, all passionate about their jobs. So lovely to see younger Aussies loving their country so much.
And what’s not to love? That sunset was incredibly lovely. I’d blow that up and hang it on the wall. AND I still can’t get over the colors of that Grasshopper!
How do you keep all this? All your wonderful adventures – the sights, the sounds, the memories! Carter, as you know, buys the magnets and has quite the collection. At our new house, they are on magnetic white boards on our kitchen wall. We also have a large cork board with a special collection or vintage-like artsy postcards that he has collected on our travels. We have three cork boards, with many of the postcards I have saved for us from our trips, that serve as a sort of triptych =) headboard! I mounted all the postcards using tacks that go around the postcards and into the corkboard but NOT into the cards themselves. These displays along with the many photos that we have framed or slid into plastic pictures holders and bookcases throughout the house are all some of our favorite things, We LOVE looking at them and being transported back
into those memories! I think at one time ya’ll said you had one of those picture frames that you can put a flash drive of your
pics in. I am wondering if you have them for every trip!!
Anyway…. loved the kangaroo, as I always do!! and the birds are marvelous. I don’t know if you know BUT the University of
Arkansas are the Razorbacks your warthog sighting reminded me of their mascot! Adored the Kingfisher!! One of my favorite birds for years. The crocs looked like they were just waiting for something crunchy to walk right into their maws!
And the scenery was absolutely lovely, too! What a day! Glad you had it, Glad you shared it…
Thanks Trudy.
Good question re saving them. This blog is one way… It serves multiple purposes, including communication while we travel, helping us catalogue our photos, and then for memories. Yes we do have a digital frame but I haven’t created new slideshows for a while. Takes time! We also have all our photos on an internal WiFi that I can look at any time. I do that quite frequently. Love remembering things, eh?