There’s an 8ft-tall kangaroo looming over me. He’s mid-hop, one eye focused on the horizon. I step closer to take in his unusually long hind legs and front paws sprouting six digits.
His white body, most likely painted using kaolin, a chalky type of clay, dominates the cavern that shelters me from the scorching Queensland sun.
At least 450 images decorate the sandstone in an area aptly named Magnificent Gallery. I make out spirit figures, emus, possums, barramundi, turtles and wallabies.
According to my guide, Johnny Murison of Jarramali Rock Art Tours, some date back 2,000 years and are being considered for Unesco protection thanks to their global and cultural significance.
Rock art in Queensland
I’m deep within the Laura Basin in Tropical North Queensland, where Quinkan rock art sites chronicle the lives of the Kuku-Yalanji people.
Like most of Australia’s Indigenous population, their story has been marred by forced removals, violence, disease and killings under British colonisation. At eight years old, Murison’s great grandmother was taken from her home and brought up at a mission on Palm Island, off the Queensland coast.
A proud Kuku-Yalanji man, Murison has been guiding small groups of visitors to see the rock art on his ancestral land since 2017. There are, he says, 10,000 sites here; he’s found a hundred so far.
“I have a way to go, but I’d be happy to locate a thousand of them,” he laughs. “I just hope I can bring more employment and opportunity to my family and community.”
I’m among a group of four spending two nights with Murison on his ancestral land. As well as hiking to rock art galleries, we’ve been swimming under waterfalls and in rock pools, learning about the leaves and barks once used as food, medicine and shelter, and spotting wallabies forage in the bush.
In the evenings, we sit around a fire watching blood-orange sunsets, grilling barramundi and sipping beer while having a ‘yarn’ about ancient medicine men. Each night, I’ve fallen asleep under a blanket of thousands of stars, listening to the calming hum of the cicadas. It has all brought me close to a culture and wildlife I never expected to experience.
