A Voyage in Time to Arnhem Land

Three of us from the U.S. who are involved in Aboriginal art were invited as special guests of Orion. The other passengers were all Aussies, and the excellent crew was mostly Filipino, with a delightful British captain. The ship itself is beautifully-appointed, with luxurious staterooms, an elegant dining room as well as comfortable decks for dining and lounging, and a well-equipped theatre for the outstanding lectures by top naturalists and Aboriginal art and culture experts who traveled with us.

The ten days were filled with visits to Aboriginal communities and art centers, hikes into the “stone country” to see ancient rock art, dating from as long as 50,000 years ago, as well as more recent cave drawings of ships and explorers that commemorate “first contact” or the first time that Aboriginal people encountered outsiders. This country is sparsely inhabited but rich with ancestral sacred sites, which the Aboriginal people respect and protect from incursion by outsiders. There are also numerous ceremonial places that celebrate the ancient beings Aboriginal people believe created the earth and everything under, on, and above it. The Aboriginal owners of the land were extraordinarily gracious to us, inviting us to places seldom if ever seen by visitors.

At Yirrkala, the Aboriginal elders welcomed us for a day experiencing their culture. When we arrived, they “smoked” us, fanning the air around each of us with burning eucalyptus branches, while they chanted. They painted our faces with traditional designs, danced and sang, and showed us elements of men’s and women’s ceremonies, as well as how they weave baskets, throw spears, and grind ochres for painting. The artists of Arnhem Land create some of the most exciting contemporary art in the world. Whether you are interested in paintings on canvas or bark, works on paper, carvings, woven objects, textiles, or even didgeridoos, you can find incredible examples at the various communities and art centers of Arnhem Land.

It is impossible to describe this fascinating part of Australia in a few brief paragraphs, but if you visit, you will find a birder’s paradise where you can watch sea eagles soar and the giant broglas and jabirus feed, remote places where saltwater and freshwater crocodiles swim and sun on the banks of streams, dense hardwood forests and mystical fields of giant prehistoric cycads.

You might also be lucky as we were to see sea turtles swimming just offshore in the crystal-clear water, or a pod of graceful pink dolphins frolicking in the light of a full moon. Our last stop before Cairns was Lizard Island, so-named because of the 5-foot-long sand goannas which roam freely throughout the exclusive resort of the same name. Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, just a few yards from the shore of Lizard Island, we found an extraordinary array of colorful corals and an enormous colony of giant clams, which were almost extinct before Australian and other marine biologists began growing and “replanting” them here.

To visit most Aboriginal communities in Arnhem Land, you will need permission from the native owners. The larger villages are accessible by light aircraft; some are even serviced by regular commercial flights. You can also travel by four-wheel drive vehicle during the dry season, but the communities are often cut off by land for months at a time during the “wet.” In the past, my husband David Lowe, and I have visited these remote areas via private plane to visit with the Aboriginal people and acquire art for the gallery. I’ll be returning there in a few weeks, again by small plane, to re-stock our inventory of art from Arnhem Land. Each time we visit this remote, ruggedly-beautiful region, we are struck by how extraordinary it is. The remarkable journey on the Orion confirmed our fondest memories of Arnhem Land and Lizard Island, and introduced us to a new way of seeing ancient and contemporary Aboriginal art!

Nana Booker



Jill Milroy, Dean of Indigenous Studies, University of Western Australia, in the Foreword to the catalogue for Dreaming Their Way: Australian Aboriginal Women Painters, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Hood Museum of Art, 2006.
“Aboriginal art is recognized as the oldest continuous living art tradition in the world. Expressed in myriad forms, Aboriginal art used all available materials and surfaces from the relative stability of rock, bark, and wood, to the more ephemeral sand paintings and body decoration. More recently (at least in Aboriginal terms), have been added canvas and paper, oils and acrylics. The forms change, but in many ways the tradition and the stories do not. . . . Aboriginal art . . . is now recognized worldwide as a unique and exciting art heritage.”