Rock Art Research

In 1985, I recorded Aboriginal Traditional Owner David Canari making a rock painting of a black  bream fish in a small rock shelter in central Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, Australia that became  the focus of a paper published in The Australian Museum’s science magazine Australian Natural History in 1992.  Between 1985 and 1995 David showed me other rock paintings he made from the 1960s to the mid-1980s while  we undertook collaborative research on Kakadu-Arnhem Land rock art. Together, we visited hundreds of  rock art sites across the Kakadu region, often with other Aboriginal Traditional Owners, other rock art experts  and students. David continued painting on portable media, such as sheets of bark and wooden didgeridoos,  during this period, and numerous ethnographic interviews about rock art were recorded. David also assisted  many others with research, including archaeologists Rhys Jones and Mike Smith, along with geomorphologist  and OSL dating expert Richard (Bert) Roberts, to obtain the first early OSL dates from what is argued to be one of Australia’s oldest sites, Nauwalabila, in Deaf Adder Gorge. In this paper, some of David’s artwork is  explored along with his profound insights into rock art production, significance and meaning to highlight the key contribution David made that advanced both Australian and global rock art research.