Explore Outback Queensland
Queensland’s Central Highlands consist of a broad band of weathered sandstone plateaus, thickly wooded and spectacularly sculpted into sheer cliffs and pinnacles. It’s an extraordinarily primeval landscape, and one still visibly central to Aboriginal culture, as poor pasture left the highlands relatively unscathed by European colonization. Covering a huge slice of the region, the fragmented sections of Carnarvon National Park include Carnarvon Gorge and Mount Moffatt: Carnarvon Gorge has the highest concentration of Aboriginal art and arguably the best scenery, while Mount Moffatt is harder to reach but wilder – you can’t drive directly between the two sections, though it’s possible to hike with the rangers’ consent.
Carnarvon Creek’s journey between the vertical faces of the gorge has created some magical scenery, where low cloud often blends with the cliffs, making them appear infinitely tall. Before setting off between them, scale Boolimba Bluff from the Takarakka campsite for a rare chance to see the gorge system from above; the views from the “Roof of Queensland” make the tiring 3km track worth the effort.
The superb day-walk (19km return from the ranger station) into the gorge features several intriguing side-gorges. The best of these contain the Moss Garden, a vibrant green carpet of liverworts and ferns lapping up a spring as it seeps through the rockface, and Alijon Falls, which conceal the enchanting Wards Canyon, where a remnant group of angiopteris ferns hangs close to extinction in front of a second waterfall and gorge, complete with bats and blood-red river stones.
Carnarvon’s two major Aboriginal art sites are the Art Gallery and Cathedral Cave, both on the gorge track, though if you keep your eyes open you’ll spot plenty more. These are Queensland’s most documented Aboriginal art sites, though the paintings themselves remain enigmatic. A rockface covered with engravings of vulvas lends a pornographic air to the Art Gallery, and other symbols include kangaroo, emu and human tracks. A long, wavy line here might represent the rainbow serpent, shaper of many Aboriginal landscapes. Overlaying the engravings are hundreds of coloured stencils, made by placing an object against the wall and spraying it with a mixture of ochre and water held in the mouth. In addition to adults’ and children’s hands there are also artefacts, boomerangs and complex crosses formed by four arms, while goannas and mysterious net patterns at the near end of the wall have been painted with a stick. Cathedral Cave is larger, with an even greater range of designs, including seashell pendant stencils – proof that trade networks reached from here to the sea – and engravings of animal tracks and emu eggs.
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Boomerangs
Boomerangs
Curved throwing sticks were once found throughout the world. Several were discovered in Tutankhamun’s tomb, Hopi Indians once used them, and a 23,000-year-old example made from mammoth ivory was recently found in Poland. Since that time the invention of the bow and arrow superseded what Aborigines call a boomerang or karli, but their innovation of a stick that returns has kept the boomerang alive, not least in people’s imaginations – they were originally used as children’s toys but were then modified into decoys for hunting wildfowl. The non-returning types depicted in Carnarvon Gorge show how sophisticated they became as hunting weapons. Usually made from tough acacia wood, some are hooked like a pick, while others are designed to cartwheel along the ground to break the legs of game. Thus immobilized, one animal would be killed while another could be easily tracked to meet the same fate. Besides hunting, the boomerang was also used for digging, levering or cutting, as well as for musical or ceremonial accompaniment, when pairs would be banged together. At Carnarvon Gorge, the long, gently curved boomerangs stencilled on the walls in pairs are not repetitions but portraits of two weapons with identical flight paths; if the first missed through a gust of wind, for instance, the user could immediately throw the second, correcting his aim for the conditions.
