September 6 Murujuga National Park
In 2017 we visited a very special and sacred place on the Burrup Peninsula, Murujuga a deeply spiritual place. Here we wandered through ancient rocks, jumbled piles of broken pieces of earth’s crust 3 billion years old. We returned to drink in more of this ancient site although with new fencing and pathways now in place you see less. Nevertheless with more than one million images, Murujuga is home to one of the largest, densest and most diverse collections of rock art, petroglyphs in the world. The engravings show human images, animals and birds and extinct animal species such as megafauna and Thylacines.
Bilgara – goanna
Jankurna - emu who appears in the southern skies.
The bottom petroglyph is a Marni (motif) – a traditional Ngarluma tribal branding. They identify which group the wearer belongs to and where he comes from.
Some of these are 10s of 1000s years old. They record the culture, spiritual beliefs and event of the Ngarda-Ngarli. They are scattered across the rock piles and gullies of Deep Gorge. It leaves me breathless just looking and wondering.
In native law (with great respect to the people of this amazing area) “it is said that is the beginning the sky was very low. When the Marrga (creation spirit) got up from the ground, they lifted the sky and the world out of the sea. It was the Marrga and the Minkala/Mangunyba (sky god) that shaped and named the Country, then all the birds and animals and finally the Ngarda-Ngarli came from the Marrga themselves.” Rather than the Dreaming, the people here call this Ngurra Nyujunggama – “when the world was soft”.
This is a very special place - Ngajarli meaning secret or sacred place where once ceremonies were carried out to bring rain or more fish or other food.
Sit right beside this sacred place are massive structure that are the oil and gas plants. A kind of truce has been struck between the mining companies and the Traditional Owners to preserve, restore and respect this place.
Some flowers from that breathtaking place. L (top) Silver tail Mulla Mulla which looks stark against the blood red of the rocks. Gorgeous. R (bottom depends how this images display) a close up of a Tall Mulla Mulla.
Sturt’s Desert pea and a Tribulus sp. I think. The colours leap out against the starkness of the background. And the spinifex is just lovely. It’s called Baru or gummy spinifex because it produces a sticky resin which traditional used to stick spear heads onto shafts and handles onto stone axes. It was also used to waterproof rafts.
