Rock Art
Stanley island is an integral part of the mythological complex of the Flinders Group. There are several spectacular rock art sites on Stanley Island, the best known being the huge Yintayin rock shelter (Tindale's "Endaen") known as the “Ship” rock shelter. Other islands in the group also contain rock art, all of which are considered to be of international significance.
The rock art covering the walls of the Ship shelter shows ships from a number of nations, painted in red and white ochre on the red sandstone: sailing ships rigged in the distinctive styles of the European lugger and the Macassan (Indonesian) prau; a dugout canoe with a figure standing upright in it, hands outstretched. Some construe the images of European vessels with high sterns to be 16th or 17th century (Portuguese) ships, which is historically notable as the first reports of exploration of this coast to reach Europe are those from Captain James Cook's voyage aboard the HMS Endeavour in 1770.
In shelters on nearby Castle Peak there are similar paintings: of a steam ship, and a detailed image of a lugger, identifiable as the Mildred, towing a dinghy. An important mythological site occurs at Muyu-Walin figuring in the major Itjibiya mythic cycle.
Read more about this topic: Stanley Island
Famous quotes containing the words rock and/or art:
“So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can’t even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.”
—Russell Baker (b. 1925)
“Today, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a lifelong act of creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist’s work. The meaning of art in our time flows from this function of self-creation. Art is the laboratory for making new men.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)