The Gwion Gwion images (once known as Bradshaws) have been removed from the
public domain at the request of the Ngarinyin Aboriginal Corporation.
The Corporation has no objection to them being viewed for non-profit
educational purposes. Accordingly, they have been placed under a different URL.
As I understand it, it would be legitimate for a representative of an academic
establishment to obtain this URL either from the Ngarinyin Aboriginal
Corporation or from myself. There may be other uses that would be deemed
acceptable. If you feel that your need would comply, please make your case.
Full copyright protection must be deemed to apply.
It is quite irrelevant as to whether this copyright is enforceable at law. I
most certainly hope that it is.
My research has established that these images are both the property, and a part
of the heritage and the living culture of indigenous Australians.
Their existence contributes to the necessity of these people having a full and
free relationship and responsibility for the land on which they stand.
Michael Barry
27 May 1998
A new statistical analysis of 2,230 rock art images from 60 sites around the
world, including Australia, undermines the controversial notion that the rock
paintings are "too distinct" and "too good" to have been painted by Australian
artists thousands of years ago.
According to University of Sydney prehistory student Mr Michael Barry, who
conducted the investigation for his honours degree in archaeology, the results
provide "robust" evidence that the Bradshaws were most like the dynamic
paintings of Arnhem Land, and nothing at all like paintings from Asia, Africa,
Europe and the Middle East.
Dr Paul Tacon, a leading rock art expert with the Australian Museum, said the
study was "fantastic" because it provided the first statistical evidence about
the origin of the Bradshaw artists, whose work was brought to European notice
in the 1890s by explorer Joseph Bradshaw.
"It fits in with all of our knowledge about north Australian rock art, in
particular that of Arnhem Land and the Kimberley," Dr Tacon said.
The results come on the heels of work reported in the journal Nature this month
by Australian scientists that the paintings were a minimum of 17,000 years old.
Other experts claim the art work is no older than 5,000 to 6,000 years.
As well, the findings highlight a native title claim over much of the Kimberley
by Ngarinyin people, who say they are the cultural descendants of the Bradshaw
painters.
And in a twist typical of the extraordinary Bradshaw saga, Mr Barry's results
put him at odds scientifically with Mr Grahame Walsh, the man who inspired him
to take up prehistory.
Mr Barry, a 63-year-old retired land surveyor, said he became "fascinated" by
rock art when he first saw Mr Walsh's 1994 book Bradshaws: Ancient Rock
Paintings of North-West Australia.
"They were just so beautiful," Mr Barry said.
Through the book, Mr Walsh, a self-taught Queensland rock art consultant,
brought the hypothesis of alien origins to public attention and triggered a hot
international debate, raging from the Kimberley to Paris.
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