Day 20 Vansittart Bay - Jar Island

Today we cruised to Vansittart Bay named by Phillip Parker King during one of his four surveys of Northern Australia during the early 19th century. Interesting parts of the bay include Jar Island and the opportunity to view Bradshaw (Gwion Gwion) and Wandjina styles of rock art in two sites in close proximity. The bay (including its land and sea country) lies within the native title area of the Wunambal Gaambera people. The characteristic elongated figures in the rock art are etimated to be 30,000 to 40,000 years old.

Jar Island was named after the many broken jars found there, once used for storing and transporting trepangs, or sea cucumbers. Fishermen from Makassar in the southern Celebes (the present-day Indonesian province of Sulawesi) visited the northern Australian coast throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, negotiating fishing rights and interacting with the Aborigines. The processed trepang is prized in Chinese cooking for its texture and flavour-enhancing qualities and is used in Chinese medicine; the Makassar trepangers, after collecting and processing trepang in Australia, returned to Makassar to sell the product to Chinese traders.