The conversation meanders until we reach the site of the paintings. Here the couple’s idreverence is palpable and everything is focused on the characters born of this area. These include Quinkan spirits such as Timaras and Imjims, along with flying foxes, fish and echidnas. Many other animals are shown among plants, tools and other anthropomorphic figures, all telling vivid stories, spanning generations in their making.
Paintings at the Split Rock Gallery Quinkan rock art site, near Laura, Cape York. Photograph: Nathan Kelly/Getty Images/iStockphoto
We are offered a colourful view into the minds of the painters and their families, the great-grandmothers and grandfathers of the people who live in the nearby community. We can all delve more deeply into the knowledge cultivated right here, beneath these great rocky overhangs, and this is just one of many such opportunities available to us across this vast country. Within these images and the connected stories are clues for our conte