Life Begins At.....
Issue link: http://ebook.aprs.com.au/i/25630
BANNER BANNER THE KIMBERLEY In the lap of Mother Nature Nestling Kimberley Coast cruising with Orion By Tony Karacsonyi The Kimberley Coast is one of the longest undeveloped shores left on earth, winding for some 3000 kilometres. With about a thousand islands between Broome and Wyndham, this archipelago collectively forms the largest mass of islands in Australia. Most are rarely visited and little known. The Kimberley coastline developed 8000 to 10,000 years ago. The rising sea levels flooded ancient valleys and places that were elevated became isolated as islands. In this way, whole communities of plants and animals were cut off from the mainland, including pockets of rainforest, such as on Osborn Island and Augustus Island. On Augustus Island, there are little rock wallabies, sugar gliders, and endangered golden bandicoots, while on Bigge Island there are lavender flanked wrens, red winged parrots, great bowerbirds, bats, scaly tailed possums and monjon – Australia’s smallest rock wallaby. Monjon are endemic to the extreme north-west Kimberley and first described in 1978, named after Zoologist Andrew Burbidge. Andrew was also involved 56 THE RETIREE AUTUMN in the 1978 survey of the Kimberley rivers for crocodiles. On Bigge Island, there is a Wandjina Rock Aboriginal Art Gallery. The principal Wandjina figure in these art pieces is called Kaiara or sea Wandjina. They believe everything was created from the sea. Their spirits are the sea Wandjinas. In one of the paintings, the Wandjina figure has its arms outstretched – called ‘Father Kaiara’, meaning that it is a burial site, and there is a ‘Child Kaiara’ also. One painting depicts what looks like people in baggy European clothing, smoking pipes and carrying bags, but Aboriginal Bobby Wabi believes the pipe smoking figures were the children of Kaiara, who had been playing with pythons in the nearby fresh water, and emerged eating lily roots and carrying berries. In the same gallery, other paintings show similar figures in a rowboat and a sailing ship. “They depict one of the earliest European landings in Australia, possibly Abel Tasman’s 1644-45 Journey,” said Ben Crop, who recorded the images on Bigge Island while filming This Rugged Coast in 1978. Tasman’s map shows that Tasman visited several islands on the Kimberley Coast, and the twin- masted configuration and triangular sails of the yacht resembled one of his smaller ships. Dr Ian Crawford, Curator of Anthropology at the Western Australian Museum and author of the Art of the Wandjina thinks otherwise. He visited Bigge Island in 1963 and saw the paintings. “The type of rowlocks shown on the rowboat didn’t come into use until the 19th century and the pipes weren’t of the early Dutch type,” he said. The paintings could depict pearlers or luggers later in the 19th century, but Dr Crawford thinks not, as by then the Aborigines would have been familiar with Europeans. The paintings could have come from contact with an American whaler or British buccaneers who raided the East Indies, then hid along the Kimberley Coast. Broken china, compass parts, brass pipes and ballast have been found on New Island and Rogers Strait.