Ubirr/Nanguluwur/Burrungkuy

Next was the incredible rock art sites of Ubirr , Nanguluwur and Burrungkuy in Kakadu’s eastern side. Some of Ubirr’s paintings are thought to be over 40,000 years old, and the more modern paintings depict contact with European settlers. They were shown with paintings of rifles and white men with boots and their hands in their pockets. At Burrungkuy, the sacred rock shelters for the Bininj people, there is even a painting of a sailing ship! With some paintings here thought to date back at least 20,000 years, most were in the most recent 2000 year period as modern paintings are often painted over older ones. These places show the x-ray style of painting that was characteristic of the top end of NT, which showed the internal organs of the animals they hunted and liked to eat. There were also paintings that depicted ancestral stories, often containing cultural knowledge about appropriate customs such as the proper time of year to eat certain foods and kinship laws.Read more