WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

egan to rise about 18,000 years BP, flooding of these plains would have forced
Aboriginal people to move further inland. By the time the sea stabilised at about 6,000
years ago, ancient mountain tops had become islands and escarpments once far inland
became the new coastline (Smyth 2007).
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 rock
shelter located in the Napier Range about 100 kilometres inland from the present day
coastline, provides evidence of continuous occupation from 39,220 ± 870 years to
650 ± 90 years BP (O'Connor 1995). Other sites in the region show extended periods
of abandonment, i.e. Widgingarri shelters 1 and 2, first occupied 28,060 ± 600 years
BP, then abandoned from 18,900 ± 1800 until 7,780 ± 390 years BP (O'Connor 1999),
Koolan Island shelter 2, first occupied 26,500 ± 1050 years BP, then abandoned
23,900 ± 1360 BP until 10, 550 ± 150 BP (O'Connor 1999) and Riwi cave, first
occupied 40,700 ± 1260 BP, then abandoned from 29,550 ± 290 until 5290 ± 60 BP
(Balme 2000). All of these sites provide important insights into how human
populations adapted to significant environmental change, particularly during the
Pleistocene-Holocene transition (Veth 1995).
Together, these west Kimberley sites also provide some of the oldest evidence of
human occupation in Australia, comparable to Puritjarra in the Cleland Hills, central
Australia (39,000 BP: Smith 1997); Allen's Cave on the Nullarbor Plain in South
Australia (40,000 BP: Roberts et al. 1995); Lake Mungo in New South Wales (46,000
to 50,000 BP: Bowler et al. 2003); GRE8/Lawn Hill in north Queensland (41,500 BP:
O'Connell and Allen 2004); and Devil's Lair in south-west Western Australia (41,000
to 46,000 BP : Turney et al. 2001).
The evidence is unambiguous that humans had occupied all or nearly all parts of the
continent by at least 40,000 years BP. According to Hiscock (2008) the antiquity of
human colonisation of Australia may be older than 45,000 ± 5,000 BP, an age that all
archaeologists accept for sites like Malukunanja II and Lake Mungo, and colonisation
is likely to have been between 50,000 and 60,000 years BP. The little-investigated
west Kimberley region may provide the evidence to conclusively determine the
antiquity of human colonisation of the Australian continent.
As noted above, sites along the west Kimberley coast also provide important evidence
of the occupation of offshore islands. Koolan Island, part of the Buccaneer
Archipelago, provides evidence of punctuated human habitation from the Pleistocene
through to the Holocene, and suggests that a well developed maritime economy had
developed by 10,550 BP (O'Connor 1999). The High Cliffy Islands on the landward
edge of the Montgomery Reef, the most extensive inshore reef on the Kimberley
coast, also provide evidence of human occupation in more recent times. Located
approximately eight kilometres from the present coastline, these islands are connected
at low tide, with a combined landmass, including the exposed reef, of 300 square
kilometres. The islands were cut off by rising seas perhaps 9,000 years ago.
Aboriginal people visited the islands before 7,575 years BP and used it periodically
after that time (Hiscock 2008). On the largest of the High Cliffy islands, O'Connor
(1987) has identified hundreds of stone arrangements including circular stone
structures, stone pathways, standing stones and cairns. Aboriginal people, including
the Yawijibaya, the Traditional Owners of the saltwater country around Montgomery
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