The Kimberley Australia

The Kimberley is an area of 423,517 square kilometres (163,521 sq mi), which is about three times the size of England or twice the size of Victoria.

It is located in the northern part of Western Australia, bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy and Tanami Deserts, and on the east by the Northern Territory.

Desert Savanna Grass

The Kimberley was one of the earliest settled parts of Australia, with the first arrivals landing about 40,000 years ago from the islands of what is now Indonesia.

Bungle Bungles

The region was named after the Kimberley diamond fields in South Africa. This was due to the two areas sharing a similar landscape. The discovery of diamond fields in the Kimberley region has added to the likeness of the two. One third of the world's annual production of diamonds is mined at the Argyle and the Ellendale diamond mines.

Diamonds are girls best friend!

The Kimberley is one of the hottest parts of Australia, with the average annual temperature around 27 °C (81 °F), and maximum temperatures almost always above 30 °C (86 °F) even in July and ranging in November before the rains break from 37 °C (99 °F) on the coast to 40 °C (104 °F) in the south around Halls Creek.
Since 1967 increases of as much as 250 millimetres (10 in) per year in annual rainfall over the whole region.

Recent studies suggest Asian pollution and not global warming as the cause of increased rainfall in the area.

Kimberly Boab Tree Jail, Gibb river road

Much of the Kimberley is chiefly covered in open savanna woodland dominated by low bloodwood and boab trees with Darwin stringybark and Darwin woollybutt eucalypts in the wetter areas. The red sandy soil of the Dampier Peninsula in the south is known for its characteristic pindan wooded grassland while in the more fertile areas like the Ord valley the trees are grasslands in the wetter valleys.

The banks of the Ord, Fitzroy and other rivers are home to a greater variety of vegetation while in sheltered gorges of the high rainfall north there are patches of tropical dry broadleaf forest, called monsoon forests, deciduous vine forest or vine thicket in Australia (often mistakenly called 'dry rainforest'), which were unknown to science until 1965 and are one of the most floristically rich parts of Australia outside the Wet Tropics and southwestern WA. There are also areas of mangrove in river estuaries where the coast is flatter.

Animals found here include the huge saltwater crocodile and a rich variety of birds such as the Channel-billed Cuckoo, Pacific Koel, and Purple-crowned Fairywren. Mammals found in the flatlands include the bilby, Northern Quoll, Pale Field Rat, Golden-Backed Tree Rat, and Golden Bandicoot.

Our endangered Quoll

The gorges of central Kimberley are known for their fossils and for their large colonies of bats.
Eighty-mile Beach and Roebuck Bay, which has been described as "one of the most important stop-over areas for shorebirds in Australia and globally".

The town of Broome has a flourishing pearling industry which operates around the Kimberley coast.

Ancient Aboriginal Rock Art

Some of Australia's most prominent indigenous artists and art centres are found in or adjacent to the Kimberley region.

Australian tourism

China is forecast to become Australia’s largest inbound tourism market.

In 2010, over 450,000 Chinese visitors spent $3 billion in Australia, which was 20 percent more than the year before.

China's youth are getting ready to have fun downunder!

By 2013 Australia expects to welcome one million Chinese visitors a year, making China the single largest tourism market for Australia.

Over 5,885,000 Tourists visited Australia in 2010 according to the Australian Bureau of statistics.

The average international visitor consumes around $4,005 of Australian tourism services.

There was strong growth from China and South Korea. Arrivals from these markets grew by 24 per cent, and 18.2 per cent, respectively.

Arrivals from Japan grew by 12.0 per cent in a slight rebound from 2009, when the H1N1 influenza outbreak led to a significant decline for this market.

Japanese tourists still love to visit iconic places, like Bondi beach and the Gold Coast

China overtook the United Kingdom to become Australia’s most valuable inbound market in 2010.

Australian Tourism advertisment in China

Tourism could help balance Australia's economic dependence, on the China resources trade, and also revive regional destinations, that are suffering from a decline in Japanese tourists

Australian Aboriginal Art

Australian Indigenous cultures are rich and diverse, as is the artwork they produce which can involve a wide range of media including painting on leaves, wood carving, rock carving, sculpture, ceremonial clothing and sand painting. Missionary colonists first promoted the creation and sales of authentic aboriginal art

as a way for Aboriginals to earn monetary support.

What began as a tourist trade has evolved into the creation of an art genre lauded by critics and embraced by art patrons. .

Authentic Aboriginal Art

Internationally recognized as a unique form of art, it is welcomed overseas and respected and admired by art critics everywhere. Of late, it has also come to the attention of not only art investors but also to the wider audience, as astute buyers realize its potential in the marketplace. Hailed as arguably the last great art movement, works produced emanate from a 40,000 year Culture and Tradition. Whilst steeped in what was originally viewed as ethnographic historics, the  authentic aboriginal art produced are very often amazingly modern in design and colour and therefore aesthetically pleasing.

The imagery of the Aboriginal culture, as can be seen in many of the sacred sites, rock and cave paintings, used few colours as they were often made from what was available locally. Some colours were mined from ‘ochre pits’, being used for both painting and ceremonies, with ochre also traded between clans and at one time could only be collected by specific men within the clan. Other pigments were made from clay, wood ash or animal blood.

Authentic Aboriginal Art

Exploitation
There have been cases of some exploitative dealers (known as carpetbaggers) that have sought to profit from the success of the Aboriginal art movements. Since Geoffrey Bardon's time and in the early years of the Papunya movement, there has been concerns about the exploitation of the largely illiterate and non-English speaking artists.

"People are clearly taking advantage...Especially the elderly people. I mean, these are people that, they're not educated; they haven't had a lot of contact with white people. They've got no real basic understanding, you know, of the law and even business law. Obviously they've got no real business sense. A dollar doesn't really have much of a meaning to them, and I think to treat anybody like that is just… it's just not on in this country."Call for ACCC to investigate Aboriginal Art industry

Authentic Aboriginal Art,Tommy Carroll painting  Nowanns – Doon Doon




Australian Senate Inquiry
In August 2006, following concerns raised about unethical practices in the Indigenous art sector, the Australian Senate initiated an inquiry into issues in the sector.

"The material they call Aboriginal art is almost exclusively the work of fakers, forgers and fraudsters. Their work hides behind false descriptions and dubious designs. The overwhelming majority of the ones you see in shops throughout the country, not to mention Darling, are fakes, pure and simple. There is some anecdotal evidence here in Darwin at least, they have been painted by backpackers working on industrial scale wood production."Sydney Morning Herald (2007) Backpackers fake Aboriginal art, Senate told

The inquiry's final report, handed down on 21 June 2007, made 29 recommendations, including:



Greater public funding for infrastructure in the sector.

More intensive policing efforts to try and eliminate unethical business practices.

Adoption of a code of practice across the sector.

Government agencies and collecting institutions to implement a code when dealing with Indigenous visual art.

The report also raised the prospect of law reforms if necessary to change the way the industry was regulated.



Authentic Aboriginal Art

Artlandish Aboriginal Art Gallery is showcasing to the World, one of the largest and most comprehensive on line Galleries of Authentic Australian Aboriginal Art and Artefact's.


Enjoy the wonderful talent of the artists presented, which reflects their country and a culture which is timeless.

Authentic paintings such as Rusty Peters and Tommy Carroll  are available from Artlandish see their collection