Incredible art a part of camp
By Trinity Sagigi and Tjana Schmidt, Year 7, Bentley Park College
DURING term two, 24 of Bentley’s Able and Talented Students (BATS) and our teachers travelled inland for around four hours to Laura.
It was an optional trip offered to students in the BATS academic excellence program, to support our study themes of Aboriginal history and tourism.
Our first stop was Kuranda where we did some ‘man-onthe-street’ tourist surveys, researching some of the activities, attractions and accommodation types our visitors were involved with.
Back on the road, we journeyed on to the Laura Roadhouse Campground, where, with only two hours of daylight, tents were assembled, beds organised, before we had dinner at the roadhouse.
The next morning the BATS woke up and after breakfast, we hiked up a rock face to see the ancient Quinkan rock art.
Our marvellous tour guide pointed out bush tucker and helped us to see the detail of the pictures and understand what the paintings symbolised.
The galleries were amazing. The first exhibit was in an overhang that we could walk under and was of animals and symbols on the rock. We learnt that these places were used for wet season shelter.
On the wall there were many pictures – an evening star on one side showing the way home and many drawings of the Quinkan spirits that roamed the area including the Timara (good) and Imjim (evil), as well as upside down humans on the wall depicting sorcery or magic.
The final masterpiece was a sacred place. It was where the tribe leaders would paint specific animals for hunting.
It was also a place where boys would go to get initiated as men before they would be allowed to paint on the walls.
Boys had their tribe’s ‘initials’ engraved into their chest with a shell and they stuffed the wound with charcoal to make a pattern of raised scars.
Back at camp we visited the Quinkan Education Centre displays before dinner, campfire stories, marshmallows and bed.
After a long bus ride and a fun camp everyone was happy to be picked up and taken home to a cosy comfortable bed.