The rock artists of Australia were drawing the dreamtime long before they had a word for art or long before the first Westerner arrived there. The dreamtime for the indigenous people of Australia is their story of creation. Their beliefs are reflected in the ancient paintings on rock. The aboriginal are believed to have occupied Australia for at least forty thousand or even maybe hundred thousand years, which makes them the “oldest continuous human culture on the planet” (Rock Art). Their art is a primitive history book and guide for living (Rock Art). Seasons played crucial role in their lives; that is why certain images were painted only at specific time of year. They believed it was magic.
According to the beliefs of the aboriginal Australians, the world began as a flat and dull place. Our planet was created by ancestral Spirit Beings that came from the earth, or the sea, or the sky, and while travelling they formed all physical features of the earth we see today as well as animals, plants, and humans. Besides, they created ceremonies and sacred objects to make sure that the people will remember them. This system is sometimes called Aboriginal Laws. However, the Spirit Beings sooner or later returned to the earth and became one with its features. As a result, these places are now sacred sites which are honored by each indigenous Australian. The followers of the Dreamtime believe that they are descendants of the Spirit Beings. Knowledge of the Dreaming stories, and of the objects related to them, is sacred and secret. Multiple levels of meaning are learned over a lifetime and restricted to those properly trained and initiated to know each level. Indigenous Australians transmit knowledge and various tales about their ancestors to next generations through paintings on rock and bark, ground sculptures and sand drawings as well as ritual ceremonies, dance, and song.
The “dreaming” stories have many forms and describe landscape, tragic events, the celestial sky and unique features of plants and animals. For instance, Kata Tjuta, also known as Mount Olga, tells many stories about the Mingarri (rodent mice) and their contact with different creation ancestors. The river Murray is told to be sinuous because of Ponde, a giant cod, that was running from Ngurrunderi, a powerful hunter and creator spirit of the Ngarrindjerri nation in Southern Australia (Indigenous Australia: Dreamtime).
Because of the strong oral traditions, images of the Sun and Moon are present in the Aboriginal art. Aboriginal Australians usually depict the Moon as a male and the Sun as a female. In Yolngu people’s eyes the Sun is a woman who starts a slight fire each morning, creating the dawn, and is dressed in red to produce the red sunrise. She is travelling in the sky from east to the west with a blazing torch in the hand, creating the daylight. When she reaches the west horizon, she extinguishes the torch, and return to her morning camp in the east. The Yolngu also have a tale why the Moon is full and why it is thin. The story goes that the full moon was attacked by his wives who chopped off bits of him until he became thin. Under the influence of “dreaming” stories solar images were painted at Ngaut Ngaut and engraved at Sturts Meadows as the “bicycle wheel” or “sunburst”. Crescent shapes of images or petroglyphs may signify either the moon, or boomerangs since many examples of crescent shapes found in the Sydney Basin rock engravings, are traditionally referred to as boomerangs (Norris and Hamacher, p. 3-4). Nevertheless, the shape of a boomerang is completely different from the shape of a crescent. Therefore, it is possible that the Sydney Rock Engravings have an important astronomical element.
Many rocks in Australia have astronomical design, for example, the painting of the “Sky Boss” and the Rainbow Serpent on Wardaman rock. The serpent at the bottom stands for the Milky Way, while the Sky Boss is connected to the “Coalsack nebula”. This link was not be possible to trace without cultural knowledge, which has a crucial role in interpreting aboriginal art. Another example can be found near Kalumburu, Western Australia that is painted on the side of a rock named Comet Rock. Bryant proposes that the rock painting depicts a tragic event when a comet fragment felt into the Indian Ocean and caused a great tsunami that reached the land. Jones gives a similar example of the rock painting on Mount Grenfell, which shows people standing on one another’s shoulders to climb the mountain in order to avoid the flood (Norris and Hamacher, p. 1). Additionally, astronomical motifs can be engraved in the Sydney-Hawkesbury region rock. Even though we do not know it is meaning, we can suggest that it is possible a sun, or star since its design is a small circle with line outward.
Some Aboriginal cultures know that eclipses directly related to the position of the Sun and Moon. For instance, people of Arnhem Land believe that a solar eclipse appears because of the Moon-man hiding the Sun-woman as they are making love, whereas a lunar eclipse begins when the Sun-woman chases and catches the Moon-man. In the same way the Wirangu people say that a solar eclipse is because of the Sun and Moon “becoming husband and wife together” (Norris and Hamacher, p. 4). The example of this story in the form of art can be found the Basin Track engraving, Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, where a man and a woman with a boomerang above them is engraved. However, the reason for a man and a woman reaching to the boomerang in the sky is unclear and obscure without considering the stories of the local people. It will make more sense if the crescent is the Moon, not a boomerang. However, it is unusual for the Moon to have two “horn” facing the earth, unless it is morning or late afternoon, since such pattern is only seen at that time when the Moon is barely visible, or during an eclipse. The latter suggestion is strengthened by the figures of a man and a woman.
Another spectacular engraving is an emu that is among the Sydney Rock. It was carefully engraved to show all physical features of an emu. However, one peculiarity is unnatural position of the emu’s legs, which trail behind it and are similar to the emu in the sky of an aboriginal Australian, to be more exactly it reminds the famous aboriginal constellation “Emu in the Sky” that is formed by dark patches between the stars of the Milky Way.
An example of more modern aboriginal art is an illustration made by the 20th-century artist from Western Arnhem Land named Jimmy Midjaw Midjaw. It shows a meeting held by a group of Mimi, spirits who inhabit the narrow spaces between rocks and come out only at night. These spirits are specific only to Western Arnhem Land and they taught humans Specific to this area, they taught humans hunting and cooking, dancing, singing, and playing musical instruments during ceremonies. They were always depicted in motion as tall, thin, human-like figures, and they were painted in ancient rock shelters, and since at least the late nineteenth century, on eucalyptus bark (Stokstad and Cothren, p. 862). Paintings on bark are located all over northern Australia, where various local styles occur. For example, the background of Western Arnhem Land paintings is usually red with white, black, and red figures.
References
Ingenious Australia: Dreamtime. Tourism Australia. Retrieved from http://www.tourism.australia.com/documents/dreamtime-aboriginal-culture-fact-sheet.pdf
Norris, R. P., and Hamacher, D. W. (2010). Astronomical Symbolism in Australian Aboriginal Rock Art. Macquarie University.
Rock Art. National Geographic. Retrieved from http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/australia_rockart?source=relatedvideo
Stokstad, M., and Cothren, M. W. (2011). Art History (Vol. 2, 4th ed). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
