The story

Told as it is shared

In the sandstone country above the Laura river live the Quinkan — and there are two kinds. Timara is tall and thin, all arms and legs and mischief; Imjim is small and fat, and he is worse. So the published tellings run, in the books of the 1970s that took the Quinkan to the world's children; the deeper law behind them belongs to the bama of that country alone.

The Quinkan keep the law by fear and favour. They punish those who break it — the thief, the trespasser, the child out after dark — and help those who keep it, if it suits them. A camp that keeps its fires and its rules has nothing to fear; a camp that doesn't will hear them knocking in the night. Either way, everyone is home by dusk.

They are painted everywhere in the galleries of the Laura sandstone — dancing, running, crouched in the shelters beside the figures of people and animals. Some are painted so high on the ceilings that no ladder reaches: their makers say the Quinkan painted those themselves.

Country & context

The land that holds it

Quinkan country is the sandstone plateau above the Laura river on Cape York — a junction of nations and languages, where the coast country climbs into the tablelands. It is one of the great crossroads of the continent: bora grounds, story places and the galleries where the nations of the cape met and traded and painted.

The galleries around Laura hold thousands of paintings in layered schools of style across many thousands of years, and the Quinkan Reserves protect the heart of them. The name itself is a broad umbrella — the beings of each sandstone ridge belong to their own family of country.

Art & memory

Painted, woven, sung

The Laura galleries are among the most significant rock art bodies in the world — Quinkan figures, horse-and-rider contact paintings and thousands of years of ceremony recorded in ochre, one layer over another.

The Quinkan stepped into popular telling through Percy Trezise's picture books and the galleries' guides; but the paintings are not decoration, and not all are public. Visit with local guides, and the sandstone will introduce itself.