Wurrwurrwuy Stone Arrangements

The Wurrwurrwuy stone arrangements, located at Garanhan, also called Macassan Beach, depict Yolŋu knowledge of the Maritime Southeast Asian trepang (sea cucumber) industry centred in Makassar, South Sulawesi. 

Trepangers, today collectively referred to as Macassans (based on their most common origin rather than their ethnicity) voyaged to Northern Australian shores from the mid-1700s until the early 1900s. Every year during this period, dozens of praus (small-ish sailing ships) journeyed south-eastwards from Sulawesi with the January monsoon rains and then spread along the Arnhem Land and Kimberley coasts to harvest and process trepang, which was in hot demand in China as a luxury foodstuff and aphrodisiac. They would return to Sulawesi to sell their produce mid-year, meaning that they interacted and traded with Yolŋu and other saltwater peoples for more than a century before there was any regular British presence on Australia’s remote northern coasts. Australian archaeologist Campbell Macknight has called this connection “Australia’s first modern industry.”

The stone pictures were probably created in the late-19th Century and show Macassan praus, lepa-lepa (canoes), campsites, and various components of the trepang processing procedure. In 1999, extensive restoration was done on the pictures in an effort to preserve them for future generations. They were added to Australia’s National Heritage List in 2013 and are the only remnant of Yolŋu-Macassan contact presently on this register. The listing notes that “unlike most Aboriginal stone arrangements, they depict historical objects rather than ceremonial or sacred images.”