Our Aboriginal Art Experience in Kakadu - By Grace

We drove 3 and a half hours from Darwin to Kakadu. We unpack, and a few hours before the sunset we went and saw the Ubirr rock art, and then climbed the rocks at Ubirr, to watch the sunset.

There was lots of paintings of kangaroos, emus, barramundi, other fish, symbols, and there was a few paintings of people. It was really interesting how detailed the paintings were.

The rock arts

The campground we stayed in was called Merl, it had aboriginal art activity and we did the traditional weaving, this is the process:

1. Collect the pandanus leaves.
2. Prepare the leaves, split the leaves into 2 removing the spikes as you go
3. Various roots, seeds etc are grounded to be used as dyes.
4. Then finally, the weaving can begin

I did all that and it isn’t as easy as it looks.

After the weaving we left to go to Jabiru. When we got there, straight away we went to explore more rock art. It was shorter, less rock art but still wonderful. There was more learning about spirits.

Did I mention that before we went on the walk, we went to Bowali visitor centre? The slide show was amazing. There was 5 stories at once and they were about a man who collected crocodile eggs to make a crocodile farm, a person who was trying to save Quolls from being extinct, people on a journey to find undiscovered rock art in remote areas and there was 2 more other stories too. They were SUPER fascinating.

We also painted with ochre. I painted a long necked turtle, the aboriginals call it Almangiyi, it is one of their favorite foods.

This is what my painting looks like:

So that was our aboriginal art experience at Kakadu. If you like art like me you should see the wonderful aboriginal art!!!