Depuch

THESE images were published in 1964 in a paper by WA Museum scientists who visited Depuch Island on the Pilbara coast near Whim Creek after the State Government proposed to build a new port at Balla Balla.

In ‘Special Publication No. 2 – Report on the Aboriginal engravings and flora and fauna of Depuch Island’, available at www.museum.wa.gov.au, its authors describe the rock engravings as world class, comparable with the prehistoric art galleries of Lascaux in the Dordogne and Altamira in northern Spain.

They depict ghost-like, elaborately dressed figures, pairs of shoes, ancestral beings with exaggerated genitalia and an assortment of wildlife, boomerangs and tools.