12th June 2012
On Day 4, we enjoyed the luxury of being able to sleep late enough to see the sunrise from the camp instead of from the bus…..
…..and to see the sun light up the hill.
Pat and Peter even had time to warm up by the fire. (My tent is the one at the end with the door open.) Then we were onto the bus for our tour of the local Wallace Rockhole area.
Our guide Braden pointed out some symbols used by the indigenous people who have lived in the area for up to 50,000 years, to communicate information about hunting, finding water etc. He also explained how some of the local plants were used for food, medication and tool making. There was also a plant used to poison waterholes to kill and hence capture emus.
We followed Braden through a rocky valley.
The Spinifex bush (Trioda) provides a resin used by the Aboriginal people as a gum to make their hunting and working implements. The spinifex is threshed until the resin particles fall free. These particles are heated until they fuse together to form a mouldable black tar which is worked while warm. When set, this gum is quite strong.
Braden showed us some tools, some of which were made using the spinifex gum.
These are some old and weathered carvings of animal tracks.
The circular patterns represent waterholes. This was a section of a large area of several square metres, conveying information about the area.
Hand paintings.
This was the actual Wallace Rockhole, a permanent water source for the area. I was fascinated by the colours and reflections in this small rock waterhole:
Further along the valley were some more small waterholes:
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