On the subject of artworks, here is a slip back to our time in the Pilbara. We called in to Wanna Munna which is about 75km out of Newman and relatively close to the main road. It is an Aboriginal rock art site straddling a water hole. Unfortunately there is a bit of graffiti at this site, probably because it is so close to the main road to Port Hedland. However I won't give electronic space to the graffitist efforts.
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| Wanna Munna boomerangs |
Just to put the site in context here are two images looking upstream, where the majority of work is to be seen, and downstream where there is a beautiful jumble of rocks in the river bed.
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| Wanna Munna main pool upstream |
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| Wanna Munna looking down stream |
Some of the images picked on the rocks were very faint, and in places layered one on another. Presumably some of them are very ancient but again I can find little information about them. There were images of emus, kangaroos, spotted cats, figures - people?and boomerangs. It requires a high degree of skill to chip out such simple, elegant and true likenesses from hard and unforgiving granite boulders.
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| Wanna Munna rock art |
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| Wanna Munna rock art emu and kangaroo |
There were many birds here too - zebra finches, budgies, white naped honey eaters, mudlarks, corellas, willy wagtail amongst others. A large bird of prey flew in, a whistling kite, and off went all the other little birds.
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| Wanna Munna rock art figure |
To finish here is an image of a tree that has defied the odds growing in a rocky crevice. They amaze me how they manage to do it.
We visited in 2008, found it by luck. Stayed two nights and visited several times each day as different lights showed up different petroglyphs. Loved the serenity, timelessness and immense antiquity of place. Had only two other visitors in that time, a bloke who stayed all of 10 mins and a fellow NSW girl who spent many hrs visiting art site and sharing cuppa with us. One of most memorable few days of our 8 month trip.
ReplyDeleteWe have been twice, found more to look at the second time, stayed 2 days.
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