(Photos taken by me)
Here’s the write up of my trip to the Grampian Mountains in Victoria, Australia. I wrote it earlier this year, but as it was posted to my recently deleted personal blog, I thought i’d re-upload here seeing as it does primarily focus on the Prehistoric cave art there.
19th Jan, 2013
“The Grampians” is a national park, about 235 kilometres west of Melbourne, which features some of the richest and oldest indigenous rock art in Australia and the world, as well as huge sandstone mountain ranges. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Australian state of Victoria, I think you’d be astounded how quickly (and dramatically) the environment changes. Driving from the huge, beautiful city of Melbourne (one of my personal favourite cities in the world), to the outback-like conditions of the Grampians and neighbouring areas, you would hardly believe that you were in the same country, let alone only a few hours west. In this account, I will be detailing my experience of travelling through the Grampians, information about the ancient art itself, and my personal tips/ suggestions for what to see there -it was certainly a very eventful experience indeed!
To start off with, I’ll start with the trip there. And also, my first travel suggestion. If you plan to travel to the Grampians, I would not recommend travelling in summer. Now I’ve lived in Australia for a few years, so I can handle the heat, but hiking in about 50°C heat (about 122°F I believe) is certainly not for everyone! However, this is not the only reason why I would strongly suggest not travelling in summer. The Grampians are well known for their extremely dry, highly flammable conditions, resulting consequently in making it one of the areas in Victoria most prone to bush fires. If you were to travel to the Grampians in winter or autumn, bush fires would not be a real threat, and the cooler climate would provide a possibly more pleasant hiking experience.
Because of this strong fire danger in peak season, as well as the amount of bush fires already present in Australia at the time (as I’m sure many of you are aware of from recent news stories), we actually made the decision to instead of travelling though the Grampians, to try stick as much as possible to their outside to be on the safe side. Which actually worked out just fine, as most the cave art is quite close to the edges of the Grampians area rather than through the centre. And while some of the trails did involve us travelling quite far into the mountains, no bush fires, while in the Grampians, where encountered -though we actually did come very close road tripping though some other areas of Victoria! A website that I would suggest checking daily is Country Fire Authority, it certainly came in handy for me, and lets you see and keep track of the bush fires in Victoria.
Now, onto the actual cave art. The Aboriginals, the early people of Australia (and actually of the world), had many reasons for producing this cave art. These included the recording of events (such as a successful hunt), and as a part of rituals and ceremonies (such as initiations or funerals). One prominent theme we can see throughout Aboriginal cave art, is this strong bond the people seem to have with their land. The colour palette consists primarily of red and white, where the Aboriginal people collected pigments for painting usually from ochre and kaolin clay. The exact age of the paintings in the Victoria is actually unknown. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the finger markings displayed in some belong to a tradition that began over 10,000 years ago, during the last ice age. Though some of the scratched engravings may be more recent, they are still thought to be at least 5,000 years old. Which is incredible to think about really, at the earliest these paintings date to around the 30th century BC. Now, lets think about this in a more global context, at around about this time, the Neolithic period would have not long ended, Djer the third pharaoh of united Egypt would have started his reign, and Rome was but a deserted coast. Because of the age of these paintings, I found it quite hard to believe that there was only a mesh cage around them to protect them from people and the elements; they were kind of just there (although they have, granted, survived this far already).
Though the Grampians has about 60 prehistoric cave paintings in the area, there are five sites open to the public:
• Gulgurn Manja (meaning hands of young people)
• Ngamadjidj (meaning white person)
• Bunjil’s Shelter
• Billminia
• Manja (meaning red painted hands)
All were absolutely stunning, the standout ones for me personally were Bunjil’s Shelter (2nd photo) and Gulgurn Manja (section shown in bottom photo).
In the Bunjil’s Shelter site we can see the legendary hero Bunjil and his two dingoes. Bunjil was known as the creator who provided all needs, a good spirit who gave the tribes their law and culture. While the subject matter itself of the Bunjil’s Shelter was particularly interesting, Gulgurn Manja was my highlight of the trip, though being a very significant hike to get to. It is quite a large painted cave area, which includes emu tracks, and handprints done by children. Though perhaps the subject matters of this area is not quite so impressive stylistically than others, I think what made this site significant for me was the fact that, unlike most the others, Gulgurn Manja was more than cave paintings, it was the prehistoric campsite for a small tribal group. There is evidence to show where the campfires were lit, and the fine-grained sandstone that was used to make stone tools. The handprints done by children (as shown in my photo) are what I thought made the area particularly special, and really gave a very personal element to the site. It helps us imagine scenes of these children and communities living in this very cave so many thousands of years ago, really actually putting what you’re seeing into perspective, and bringing it to life. Quite mind-boggling really.
One thing before I end this article that I should probably advise of to anyone who is considering travelling to the Grampians, is to be very aware of the wildlife. The Grampians exhibit outback-like conditions, and is certainly snake territory. Without a doubt, stick to the track at all times, and when you time-to-time do take a quick break in the shade to escape the sun, just always be very wary of your surroundings -the Grampians are dead quiet, so much so that you can hear even the smallest branch crack. Also, the wind blowing through the sandstone mountains can often make a very convincing growling sound… Which can possibly sometimes be mistaken for dingoes (I’m from New Zealand, the most threatening animal we have here would be a bird trying to steal your sandwich).
Overall, my experience of exploring the Grampians was incredible, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone travelling to Australia. Though I am, granted, probably not the most impartial person to be saying this, but I do believe that even for those perhaps not so interested in history, seeing prehistoric sites like this is important. It’s one thing to hear about our prehistory, but quite another actually seeing evidence of it in person, it kind of puts us into perspective, and adds a very personal element to understanding our history as humans.