WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

These painted images have attracted much interest from the outside world since the
arrival of the first European explorers and are considered to be one of the longest and
most complex rock art sequences anywhere in the world. For the Wanjina-Wunggurr
community these painted images play a crucial role in demarcating social boundaries,
connecting individuals and local groups to local countries, which anthropologists call
clan estates; and connecting Wanjina-Wunggurr people to their conception sites and
language countries. Capricious and harmful spirits whose painted images often occur
at these rock art sites are a constant reminder of the disorder that failure to follow
traditional laws can bring (Layton 1992a; Blundell et al. 2009).
To outsiders the paintings of the Wanjina are most prominent: the large-eyed,
mouthless, anthropomorphic beings depicted with a halo-like ring encircling their
heads that appear alone or in groups, some of them walking the earth, others floating
in the sky. Painted with natural earth pigments often on a white background that is
typically a wash of the mineral huntite, some Wanjina are truly monumental,
extending up to six metres across the walls and ceilings of rock shelters. The humanlike
paintings of Wanjina were first brought to the attention of the outside world by
Lieutenant (later Sir) George Grey during his explorations in the Kimberley in 1837
(Grey 1841, Blundell and Woolagoodja 2005). According to McNiven and Russell a
painted figure reproduced by Grey "was to become the most historically significant
Aboriginal rock painting recorded by Europeans in the nineteenth century"
(2005:133).
Perhaps equally well known are the elegant human-like painted images of the Gwion
Gwion/Girrigirro, commonly referred to as Bradshaw figures, named after Joseph
Bradshaw, another early European explorer who encountered the images whilst
looking for pastoral land in 1891. Bradshaw, like Grey before him, was the first
European to record and publish examples of these images. Like the Wanjina paintings
encountered by Grey five decades earlier, Joseph Bradshaw's 'stylized recordings' of
these figures were interpreted by Europeans as non-Indigenous in origin (McNiven
and Russell 2005), a view that was supported by the late Grahame Walsh, who spent
many years recording the Gwion Gwion/Girrigirro painted images (see Walsh's 1994
publication "Bradshaws: Ancient Paintings of North-West Australia"). The claims of
Walsh and others of a non-Indigenous origin for these paintings have been strongly
challenged by members of the Wanjina-Wunggurr community and many specialist
commentators, starting with André Lommel in the 1930s, whose work with
Wunambal Traditonal Owners connected paintings of Gwion Gwion with a Lalai bird
called Kujon [gwion] (Lommel 1997). Other researchers including Shultz (1956),
Crawford (1968), Layton (1990, 1992a), Redmond (1998, 2002), Blundell and
Woolagoodja (2005), McNiven and Russell (2005) and Welsh (2007) have placed the
Gwion Gwion/Girrigirro painted images strongly within Indigenous tradition and with
an Indigenous origin.
For Wanjina-Wunggurr people, the Wanjina and Gwion Gwion paintings are of
significance to them in accordance with their practices, observances, customs,
traditions, beliefs and history. For Balanggarra people, the Girrigirro painted images
are also an important component of their contemporary belief system. However,
unlike the Traditional Owners of the Wanjina-Wunggurr country, Balanggarra do not
associate Gwion Gwion/Girrigirro with Wanjina. Nor do they consider them to be
paintings that were 'put there' by spirit beings during the Dreaming. Instead, they
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