The story of this place
Deep in central Queensland, the Carnarvon Creek has carved a 30-kilometre gorge through white sandstone cliffs up to 200 metres high. Within this gorge, the ancestors of the Bidjara and Karingbal peoples created one of the most extensive galleries of Aboriginal art in Australia — over 2,000 stencils, engravings and paintings across multiple sites including the Cathedral Cave, which stretches 60 metres across a rock face and contains hundreds of hand stencils, animal tracks, and geometric designs.
The art was created over at least 3,500 years. The Cathedral Cave's paintings show baler shells — evidence of trade with coastal peoples hundreds of kilometres away. Some art has been carbon-dated, but much remains undated. The gorge was gazetted as a national park in 1938, but its remoteness — the nearest major town is 700 kilometres away — has protected it from mass tourism. Walking the gorge's 9.3-kilometre main trail is one of Queensland's great wilderness experiences, ending at the rock art that gives the gorge its true name: a place where the ancestors spoke to the future.