Aboriginal peoples have created hundreds of thousands of engravings, paintings and markings in rock shelters and surfaces across Australia, the land they have occupied and for which they have cared for more than 60,000 years. These creations constitute a significant group of the world’s oldest surviving human art form, which non-Indigenous people call “rock art”.

Rock art describes both paintings (pictographs) and carvings (petroglyphs) on stone, as well as rocks laid out in patterns or sculpted rock reliefs. Pictographs are made by applying pigments to rock – yellow and red ochres, diatomaceous earth (powdery fossilised algae), white clay or chalk, black charcoal or manganese oxide. These may be mixed with water, blood, plant juices or egg white, and applied with fingers, brushes of animal hair, feathers or sticks.

The Kimberley region of Western Australia is one of the world’s richest rock art sites, a dynamic cultural landscape situated within steep mountain ranges, sandstone and limestone gorges, waterfalls, pristine rivers and a rugged coastline that gives way to islands and coral reefs.

This stamp issue features art from the north Kimberley language and cultural groups of the Wanjina Wunggurr community.