Kimberley: Swift Bay Rock Art

Swift Bay has numerous art sites with Bradshaws and Wandjinas and a few later works added on.  A grinding stone for ochre still sits on the original mortar under the overhang. 

A friendly lemon shark (we think, no Google up here!) came by, under and slowly circling us, so close we could almost pat him.  A reef shark swam along under him and a few remoras tagged along too, with a school of yellow and black striped little fish ahead and along his pectoral fins like a ceremonial parade.  He stayed around all morning, and then there were two.  By afternoon there were three, all about 3 metres, of them cruising around, not worried about us at all – just magnificent.  Big broad head with a square mouth, tiny whitish eyes, all sandy in colour and long tails that moved them effortlessly with merely a wiggle.

Art Creek, also in Swift Bay, has lots more rock art and easy to access so cruise boats stop there too.

An overnight stop at Tjungkurakutangari Island only emphasised the many and varied names of the thousands of islands in this archipelago.  From French, Dutch, Indonesian and English they seemed to have ignored that there would have already been Indigenous names for these places, perhaps they forgot to ask.