Rock Art Research

Residents of the Wadeye region, south-west of Darwin, have been developing tourism initiatives within their traditional territory with the aims of supporting themselves and sharing their cultural heritage. At the same time, they and others have been encouraging the recording of cultural heritage places in the area. We undertook a project to record and assess cultural values of places, predominantly those containing rock paintings and stone arrangements. Detailed recordings of motifs and accounts of associated cultural stories and their contemporary significances not only assist understanding of the imagery, but also are of considerable interest to visitors. We discuss these factors in relation to a tourism enterprise operating at a site, Papa Ngala, near Nganmarriyanga, in terms of various cultural heritage values, site management and aspects of education of visitors and younger community members.