Today we visited Banjal, or Vansittart Bay – Jar Island & the Anjo Peninsula
Deb stayed on-board this morning and I took the second Explorer for the morning adventure.
There were 2 explorers from the Coral Explorer in the water near our boat, the Explorer had run out of essential supplies and was being topped up from our boat.
I saw our neighbour at the boarding area, she was wearing a mask. Her RAT (testing for 4 things) is negative. She has a scratchy throat. Last time she had Covid it took 3 days for the RAT to show +ve. I spoke to her from a distance. There are a few people on board with scratchy coughs.
My excursion this morning consisted of a cruise around Jar Island (about 1km x 0.6km). It was named after Macassan jars (Macassans came from what is now Indonesia) found on the island by Phillip Parker King. The area is a site for the pearling industry. There are pearling “String farms” scattered around the area. Pearling has been an industry here since at least the 1800’s. Initially pearling was all about the shells, used for buttons, etc. and then into pearls in the 1900’s. The oysters can be used to produce up to 3 pearls.
We landed on Jar Island near a small tidal flat mangrove at low tide. Ray spotted a human footprint just below the high tide mark, strange, no one should have been here since yesterday. He suggested someone may be camping on the island. There were no footprints on the beach or path leading to the mangrove.
A calendar plant, with purple flowers, Turkey Bush, when it flowers it tells the locals the turtles are nesting.
There were a couple of Greater Bower Birds flying around some of the mangrove trees.
An interesting observation, none of the beaches we have been to have had any visible plastic on them. Apparently the Indian Ocean currents takes all flotsam and jetsam towards Sri Lanka.
Around 10am we landed to explore 3 separate but connected art sites, known until recently as Bradshaw Art, now it is called its indigenous name Gwion Gwion. The art is around 12,000 years old.
At 1020 we headed to the sites, moderate access first.
There was a burial site on the way up, covering stones still in place.
The area is all WM sandstone, the tumbledown rocks. The best rock for art is quartzite.
There is a big disconnect between current and past clans.
The local clans say these paintings were done in the dreamtime by a bird. It hit it’s beak against the rocks until it bled and then painted/drew the images with its blood, hence they don’t retouch any of the paintings
The drawings were of an echidna, 
a Person holding 3 boomerangs
, very tall people with tall head-dresses
, a map of the area, a drawing of 4 fish on a tight overhead ceiling
and many more.
Next was the easy access site, you can walk to them on level ground. There was a variety of paintings, mainly of people. My favourite was one that I thought looked like a person surfing.
They were all in the “clothes peg” style as described by Bradshaw, the amateur archaeologist who discovered and first described them.
Next was a scramble up over some very rocky outcrops to the “hard” site. This was what looked like a campsite, and it had a good array of styles and sizes of painting. A very long one was similar but different to the Wandjira style, the rest of the “human” figures were in the “clothes peg” style
, and there was at least one picture of what may have been a dog, or similar animal
.
The site also had clear evidence of tool making, with chips and shards of quartzite scattered over an area to the side.
We finished up our tour of this fascinating area and headed back to the boat at around 11:30am
The was another excursion planned for the afternoon to go and visit the wreck of a WWII C53 plane that crashed in the area in 1942. It was too hot and my interest wasn’t that high, so I didn’t go on that tour.
We had a nice peaceful afternoon together in our cabin instead.
For dinner tonight is was a BBQ up on deck 7. The meal was good – 3 salads, bbq scallops, Nim Jim chicken, steak, onions and prawns.
We ate outside on deck 7 as the sun set, another beautiful finish to the day.
After dinner we went to the Deck 6 Lounge for the Cruise Quiz. It was a fun time. We teamed up with Colin & Carol and Julie & Roger, we gave it a respectable shake, coming in 3rd. A fun night.
Tomorrow is our last full day aboard. We have a VERY early start, breakfast from 6am, with the first departure from the boat at 7:00 We are going to see Oomari – King George Falls and a chance for a final Kimberley Shower.
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