WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

The earliest evidence for the application of ochre onto a rock surface in Australia
comes from Carpenter's Gap 1, also known as Jambarurru to Bunuba people (S.
Pannell pers. comm. 5 May 2010) and Tangalma to the Unggumi (Playford 1960,
2007). A slab of the rock shelter's roof that had been coated with red pigment fell to
the floor some time before 39,700 BP. The ochre appears to have been blown onto the
surface, probably in a similar method to that recorded in Australia in ethnographic
times (O'Connor and Fankhauser 2001; O'Connor and Marwick 2007). While not
enough of the slab remains to allow researchers to tell what was being represented,
this is the oldest trace of ochre intentionally applied to a rock surface presently known
in Australia, and is one of the earliest examples on a world scale. In comparison, the
celebrated Paleolithic art tradition of Western Europe began about 32,000 years BP
(Morwood 2002).
Carpenter's Gap 1 rock shelter has outstanding heritage value to the nation
under criterion (a) as it provides evidence of the antiquity of the symbolic use of
ochre through its intentional application onto a rock surface by Aboriginal
people sometime before 39,700 BP.
Kimberley pearl shell: the most extensively traded item in Aboriginal Australia
Pinctada maxima, the large and luminescent pearl shell found along the west
Kimberley coast is highly valued by Aboriginal people in the Kimberley and across a
large part of Aboriginal Australia for its power to regenerate, renew, and transform.
Universally valued as the 'emblem of life' (Akerman and Stanton 1994, 19), the pearl
shell's power is represented by the brilliance and shimmer of the shell's nacre.
* * * *
'This is for everybody – man and woman. This is rain. This everything water'
(Walmajarri elder cited in Akerman and Stanton 1994, 2).
* * * *
Pearl shell's correlation with water, including its creation and control, and its
associations with supernatural beings and the forces of life and death, make it a
profoundly important element in Australian Aboriginal cosmology (Akerman &
Stanton 1994). Pearl shell was created by Dreaming Beings who placed the shells in
certain locations and gave rules about its use. For the Bardi people of the Dampier
Peninsula, the Rainbow Serpent, Alungun, is the creator of pearl shell, which it expels
during king tides. The nature of Alungun is related to water. In translation 'iridescent
it rises from the sea as a rainbow; ascends into the sky and drinks to end the rains'
(Petri 1938,40). For the Traditional Owners of Wunambal and Gaambera country to
the north, the Wanjina, Jakulamarra, is said to have come from the north, bringing
with him the double log raft, pearl shell and laws about the pearl shell being used by
men when dancing in ceremony. He was a saltwater Wanjina, the boss of a number of
islands in Wunambal and Gaambera country (within the Wanjina-Wunggurr cultural
domain) and the ancestor of Traditional Owners who belong to those islands. As he
travelled Jakulamarra left the pearl shell in a number of locations along the coast for
people to collect and use (Uunguu elder cited by Doohan 2009). Around Cape
Londonderry in the far north, the origins of the pearl shell are linked to a star that fell
into the sea and became the shining pearl shell, rinjii (Balanggarra elder cited by
Doohan 2009).
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