page_title: Indigenous Australian art
section_title: Rock painting
hierarchical_section_title: Indigenous Australian art / Traditional Indigenous art / Rock painting
caption_attribution_description: English: Yankee Hat Aboriginal Artwork in Namadgi National Park, Australian Capital Territory.Čeština: Domorodé skalní malby na místě Yankee Hat v Národním parku Namadgi, Teritorium hlavního města Austrálie.
context_page_description: Indigenous Australian art includes art made by Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including collaborations with others. It includes works in a wide range of media including painting on leaves, bark painting, wood carving, rock carving, watercolour painting, sculpting, ceremonial clothing and sand painting; art by Indigenous Australians that pre-dates European colonisation by thousands of years, up to the present day.
context_section_description: Aboriginal art includes a range of styles of rock painting:
  The cross-hatch and X-ray style art from the Arnhem Land and Kakadu regions of the Northern Territory, in which the skeletons and viscera of the animals and humans portrayed are drawn inside the outline, as if by cross section.
  Dot-painting from the Central and Western Deserts through which intricate patterns, totems and stories are created using dots.
  Stencil art, particularly using the motif of a hand print.
  Wandjina painting from the Kimberleys
  Australian Aboriginal art is the oldest unbroken tradition of art in the world. The oldest firmly dated rock art painting in Australia is a charcoal drawing on a rock fragment found during the excavation of the Narwala Gabarnmang rock shelter in south-western Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. Dated at 28,000 years, it is one of the oldest known pieces of rock art on Earth with a confirmed date. Rock art, including painting and engraving or carving, can be found at sites throughout Australia. Rock paintings appear on caves in the Kimberley region of Western Australia known as Gwion Gwion rock art. Temporarily named after Joseph Bradshaw, who first reported them in 1891, they are known as Gwion Gwion or Giro Giro. Other painted rock art sites include Laura, Queensland, Ubirr, in the Kakadu National Park, Uluru, and Carnarvon Gorge.
  Aboriginal rock art has been around for a long period of time, with the oldest examples, in Western Australia's Pilbara region and the Olary district of South Australia, estimated to be up to around 40,000 years old. Examples have been found that are believed to depict extinct megafauna such as Genyornis and Thylacoleo in the Pleistocene era as well as more recent historical events such as the arrival of European ships.
caption: Aboriginal rock painting at Namadgi National Park featuring a kangaroo, dingoes, emus, humans and an echidna or turtle
exif: {}