A living tradition

The Aboriginal painters used earth colours - reds, browns and yellows, black and white - from natural ingredients. Red was a very important, often sacred, colour and widely used. It came from a variety of ochres and minerals. Certain red ochres were so highly valued that people would travel or trade over hundreds of kilometres to obtain them. Yellows came from several sources such as ochre, the dust of particular ants' nests, minerals, and a certain kind of fungus. Manganese oxide, crushed charcoal or charred bark provided the colour black, and white came from kaolin or pipeclay.

The paint was applied to the rock surface in a variety of ways. For stencilled designs, paint was blown from the mouth. Other pictures were painted using fingers, the palm of the hand, sticks or feathers. Brushes were also made from grasses, chewed twigs, narrow strips of stringybark or palm leaves.