WITH HER LASER pointer, Sarah Hicks, a young Murujuga land and sea ranger, is pinpointing a rock carving of a fat-tailed kangaroo. When she explains this species has been extinct for many thousands of years, I feel my goosebumps rise. This portal into the distant past is a mountainside composed entirely of rusty, blocky boulders. Many of the rocks host carvings, etchings and scrapings, known as petroglyphs, Indigenous rock art dating back as far as 50,000 years.
Alongside the fat-tailed kangaroo is the Tasmanian tiger, absent from this landscape for some 6000 years, along with animals that remain here, like the northern quoll, snakes and emus. Others images depict spears, waterholes and human-like spirits. Sarah’s colleague, Jade Churnside, points out traditional medicine and food plants, and shows us grinding stones, used to make a bush bread from spinifex seeds.
A cultural landscape
I’m at Ngajarli (Deep Gorge) in Murujuga National Park, near Dampier, 1500 kilometres north of Perth. This staggering place is said to be home to the biggest collection of rock art in the world, with up to two million petroglyphs in the area. Song lines and legends link this place through the Western Desert to Uluru, and further east into Victoria.
Given its significance, it’s
