Berndt Museum Rock Art: The Arnhem Land Collections

The Berndt Museum has about 1,700 objects from the Arnhem Land region. These include paintings and drawings, figures of mythic beings, wuramu figures, and sorcery images. The extensive collection of crayon drawings is particularly significant. Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, remained a relatively isolated region until intensive mining exploration and development began in the 1960s. This was due, in part, to the Federal Government declaring the area an Aboriginal reserve, with restricted access, prior to the Second World War. Today, Arnhem Land is the home of a large Aboriginal population, living not only in the coastal settlements (former mission stations now operated by the communities themselves), but also at many outstations that have been more recently established. Some highlights of the Arnhem Land collections can be seen in the Virtual Tour. Paintings and drawings from Yirrkala, in north-east Arnhem Land, were featured in the Djalkiri Wänga exhibition of 1995. Many of the 1,697 items are multi-purpose, being used for fighting, hunting and music. The Museum has an extensive photographic collection. It contains photographs, negatives and colour slides, and consists of many small collections donated to the Museum.