Visiting Walga Rock was an unfinished business from our last trip to the Goldfields. This time, I decided to visit it first, so we don’t miss out. On a second day of our trip to Pilbara, after the first stop at Nallan Lake near Cue, we drove 48 km west of Cue on the Dalgaranga Road before we reached Walga Rock.
Walga Rock (also known as Wolgarna Rock or Walganna Rock in Aboriginal language, which does not have written equivalent, hence there could be many different spellings of the same name or word) is a huge monolith. Being 5 km in in diameter and 1.5 km long, it is considered the second largest monolith in Australia (after Uluru). It is a Registered Aboriginal Heritage Site, so it is fenced and you need to manually open the gate to proceed towards the actual Rock.
We spent 2 or 3 hours there, exploring and climbing the Rock, taking lots of pictures.
Climbing the Rock gave us a different perspective. Different people might have different experiences when standing on top of the rock, looking out in front at the isolated desert. For me, I felt a sense of serenity and harmony, and a revelation that there is a place for everything in nature – beautiful rocks, harsh desert, annoying flies, wild flowers trying to find their way out even in the rocks.
Kids were having fun too, climbing and playing in the rocks, inventing their own games (although, who knows what they were?)
It is interesting to see how relatively big rocks can stack themselves on top of the slanting side of even bigger Rock, without falling down.
Walga Rock holds deep spiritual significance for Aboriginal people and it is guarded by this mysterious creature. 😊
The main attraction of the Walga Rock is the gallery of Aboriginal paintings inside the large cave within the rock. This gallery of rock hand paintings, cast in rich red ochre, is considered the largest in the Murchison (and some say, the largest in the whole of Western Australia). Although it is hard to count, but a report by the University of Western Australia indicated there were more than 988 motifs on a 100-metre-long panel of the Rock.
There are paintings representing goannas, snakes, boomerangs, kangaroos and handprints, which are estimated to be 10,000 years old.
There is even a painting of a ship, which looks like a modern addition to the ancient Aboriginal paintings. The origin of the painting is unknown, especially considering that Walga Rock is 325 km inland from the West Australian coast. According to one theory, it was done by a Dutch sailor shipwrecked on the coast who was looked after by Aborigines.
Before leaving this place and heading to our next destination near Newman, we decided to drive around the Rock. It looked interesting in its changing patterns and shape and I kept admiring the colours and contours of the Rock as we drove by.
