16.5.06

So I did track down the image of the Bradshaw dancer today. It's reproduced in :

The Art of the Wandjina : Aboriginal cave paintings in the Kimberley, Western Australia; I. M. Crawford; Melbourne : OUP in association with the Western Australia museum, 1968

where it is captioned:

‘A Bradshaw figure at Kalumburu Mission’

Kalumburu is a remote community in North West Kimberley, at the head of Napier Broome Bay, about as far away from anywhere else as you can get in Australia - but also, one of the closest points to Indonesia, specifically the island of Roti, just south and west of Timor, about 600 kilometres away across the sea.

I'm pleased about this, because in my storied voyage, I have the ship making landfall at Bigge Island, not so very far to the south in the Bonaparte Archipelago, and then heading north a ways before coming ashore on the mainland coast. Then there is an epic cross country trip to the north and the east, that ends where Darwin now is ... it is during this trek that the figure of the dancer, along with other Bradshaws, is seen on a cave wall.

One curious thing - 'authorities' deny that the Bradshaw figures show any sexual differentiation but I cannot see this particular figure as anything other than female - because of the elbows especially. I've never seen a bloke whose elbows go like that.

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