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Discover how a decade of collaboration between Traditional Owners and scientists reveals 50,000 years of art, climate, and resilience on Kwini & Balanggarra Country in this lecture.

Hosted in partnership by Rock Art Australia and The ANU School of Culture, History & Language, the "Two Ways to See": A Rock Art Research Journey lecture is presented by Traditional Owner Ian Waina from the far northern Kimberley community of Kalumburu in WA, and Emeritus Professor Andy Gleadow AO FAA from the University of Melbourne.

The lecture will share how Traditional Owners and scientists have collaborated over the past decade blending science and traditional knowledge to reveal the enduring narratives of art, climate change, and human resilience on Kwini and Balanggarra Country in the East Kimberley spanning at least 50,000 years.

“When I was still at school, I started taking people to visit the rock art sites. The big question the tourists would ask was how old is the rock art? To tell the truth I didn’t know. I would answer them with ‘Its older than me and you’. I really wanted to find the answer to that question.” – Ian Waina.

“We knew from the outset that dating rock was a very hard thing to do because it is mostly not possible to date the pigments and other materials used to make the paintings. Instead, we needed to develop new methods and modify existing ones to find out the age of natural events that happened on the rock surface.” – Prof. Andy Gleadow.

Rock art is a significant archive of our rich cultural heritage and helps us understand our Australian history. This lecture will share personal stories and research findings which reveal the age of Australia’s oldest known painting in a rock shelter.

Cost: Free but bookings are essential

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Rock Art Australia is a not-for-profit organization that promotes the study of rock art and its context to understand the history of Australia, including its ancient beginnings and ongoing significance in the global narrative of human origins. We aim to achieve this by bringing Aboriginal cultural knowledge and science together through funding collaborative rock art research.

Ian Waina is a Kwini man from the Kalumburu community in the far north-east corner of the Kimberley. Ian has been part of rock art research teams from the very beginning, trying to understand how long ago the Old people painted the rock art. He brings his cultural knowledge which he has learnt from his parents and grandparents and shares it with the research teams. Ian believes that bringing cultural knowledge and scientific ways together helps answer some of the questions about the rock art and the history of the Old People. Seeing it both ways: the scientific way and the Aboriginal way. Ian is passionate about finding out more about his Ancestors and what it was like when they painted, their story – preserving the knowledge for future generations.

Andy Gleadow is a geologist, Emeritus Professor and former Head of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne. He is a specialist in geological dating, pioneering new techniques for understanding the thermal evolution of the continental crust.  He was also involved in the analysis of Moon rocks from the Apollo program and has worked on dating fossil hominin sites in East Africa. His work has been recognised by numerous awards, including the Research Medal of the Royal Society of Victoria, several medals from the Geological Society of Australia, the Jaeger Medal of the Australian Academy of Science, and the International Lazlett Prize for Thermochronology, amongst others. He has been elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the Geochemistry Society and the European Association of Geochemistry.  He was made an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to the earth sciences and education in 2017.