Walga Rock Paintings

Yalgoo, Australia

Walga Rock, also known as Walgahna Rock and Walganna Rock, is a granite monolith situated about 48 kilometres (30 mi) west of Cue, Western Australia, within the Austin Downs pastoral lease. It is one of the largest granite monoliths in Australia. It is of profound cultural significance to Aboriginal

people; the Wajarri elders are the acknowledged traditional owners. An extensive gallery of Aboriginal art exists within a cave in Walga Rock. While it is the subject of a great deal of research and fieldwork subsequent to a detailed examination conducted in the 1930s by the American anthropologist D. S. Davidson (who considered it to be "one of the most extensive galleries so far reported in Australia"), the first known European record of Walga is by Daisy Bates. Though she did not visit the rock and its gallery when travelling through the region in 1908, "Walga" is marked near the mining towns of Cue and Day Dawn and many other sites of Aboriginal significance on sketch Map 19 held at the State Library of Western Australia as part of her Special Map Collection.

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