4000-year-old Aboriginal paintings found in remote cave

By KATHY MARKS in Sydney

A cave of Aboriginal paintings chanced upon by a hiker was described yesterday as one of the most significant finds of indigenous rock art for half a century.

The cave containing 200 paintings, many of them thought to be 4000 years old, is in a remote part of Wollemi National Park, northwest of Sydney. The bushwalker is thought to have been the first person to see them since the last Aborigine left his or her mark there 200 years ago.

The location of the site - a rock shelter 12m long by 6m deep by 1m to 2m high - is being kept secret, so vandals or sightseers don't damage the paintings.

Australian Museum anthropologist and archaeologist Paul Tacon, who led an expedition to investigate the find, said there were 11 layers of more than 200 paintings, stencils and prints in different styles, spanning a period from about 2000 BC to the early 1800s.

They feature humans and godlike human-animal composites as well as realistic and symbolic depictions of birds, lizards and marsupials.

Tacon said the paintings include delicately drawn life-size eagles and kangaroos and an extremely rare depiction of a wombat.

"This is the most significant discovery in the greater Sydney region in probably about 50 years," he said. "It's like a place that time forgot."

The cave was discovered in 1995. But it is so inaccessible that a research team was unable to investigate the site properly until May this year. New South Wales Premier Bob Carr, announcing its existence, told Parliament the cave was "a remarkable, remarkable find".

"This reminds us that 4000 years ago - when you had civilisation flourishing in Mesopotamia, when you had the power of Egypt, before China was united, while Stonehenge was being built - we had Aboriginal people in these lands, on the outskirts of the Sydney basin," he said.

Aboriginal representative Dave Pross said the art gave a picture of the rituals of local tribes and needed to be studied.

The park also is home to rare Wollemi pines, a species of trees unchanged since prehistoric times.

Tacon said the cave's combination of rare representations and in so many layers were unique. The superimposed paintings, in red, yellow, white and black were "in pristine condition".

- INDEPENDENT