All work undertaken on the Rock Art Australia-funded Dating project, is conducted in the Drysdale River National Park in the Kimberley region of Western Australia in partnership with the Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation.
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The rock art painting is on the Unghango clan estate in Balanggarra Country in the north-east Kimberley. The kangaroo motif is painted in the style of the older rock art paintings in the Kimberley with long irregular brush strokes. The 2 metre naturalistic looking roo is painted on the surface of a collapsed rock shelter ceiling. The roo was painted in ochre used from iron oxide in a red mulberry colour. There is no scientific dating method to date when the paint was applied to the rock surface but the fossilised mud wasp nests built over and under the painting can be dated.

“The dating of this oldest known painting in an Australian rock shelter holds a great deal of significance for Aboriginal people and Australians and is an important part of Australia’s history,” said Cissy Gore-Birch, Chair of the Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation.

It is rare to find a rock art painting with mud wasp nests under and over the pigment of a single painting. The kangaroo painting that is in a well-protected rock shelter had three nest underlying the painting and three nests built on top of the painting that were dated. These ages of the nests determine the painting is between 17,500 and 17,100 years old; most likely 17,300 years old. These dates help to reconstruct the environment in which these artists lived around 600 generations ago.

The painting of this Kangaroo coincided with the Last Ice Age, cooler and drier than it is today. The sea levels were lower, 106 metres below today’s Kimberley coastline. As the climate warmed, rainfall increased and the sea levels rose, Last year the team dated and published the dates for Gwion figures that were painted 12,000 years ago. The sea levels had risen to 55 metres below those of today.

Future research will undoubtedly locate older paintings but this 17,300-year-old painting of a kangaroo in the Kimberley is the oldest know intact painting in Australia.

The oldest known Australian Aboriginal figurative rock paintings also commonly depict naturalistic animals but, until now, there was no quantitative scientific evidence to say just how old these paintings are.

llustration: Pauline Heaney

The Rock Art Australia – ARC funded Kimberley-based research is part of Australia’s largest rock art dating project, led by Professor Andy Gleadow from the University of Melbourne. It involves the Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation, the Universities of Western Australia, Wollongong, and Manchester, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, and partners Rock Art Australia and Dunkeld Pastoral company.

Published today in Nature Human Behaviour, Dr Finch and his colleagues detail how rock shelters have preserved the Kimberley galleries of rock paintings, many of them painted over by younger artists, for millennia – and how they managed to date the kangaroo rock painting.

SBS Radio
The NITV Podcast – Australia’s oldest rock art discovered in the Kimberley.
ABC
Oldest-known Australian rock art is 17,300-year-old kangaroo in the Kimberley, wasp nests show.
ABC AM
Researchers declare WA’s Kimberley region home to Australia’s oldest rock art.
The World
Australia’s oldest art is a 17,300-year-old painting of a kangaroo.
ABC Radio Sydney
Australia’s oldest known in-situ rock painting – so far.
The Guardian
17,300-year-old Kimberley kangaroo recognised as Australia’s oldest rock artwork.
IFLScience
Oldest Cave Art In Australia Has Been Found And – Of Course – It’s A Kangaroo.
UOM Pursuit
Australia’s oldest known Aboriginal rock paintings.
The Conversation
This 17,500-year-old kangaroo in the Kimberley is Australia’s oldest Aboriginal rock painting.
The New Scientist
Australia’s oldest known rock art is a 17,000-year-old kangaroo.
Independent
Australia’s oldest rock painting is 17,000-year-old picture of jumping kangaroo.
The Australian
Roo-minating about our oldest rock art.
Daily Mail
Life-size drawing of a KANGAROO dating back 17,500 years is found in Australia and could be the continent’s oldest rock painting.
BBC
Australia: Oldest rock art is 17,300-year-old kangaroo.

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→  Experts rush to map fire-hit rock art
→ The aftermath of fire damage to important rock art at the Baloon Cave tourist destination, Carnarvon Gorge, Queensland, Australia
→ Studying the Source of Dust
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