Bigge Island

Off the north Kimberley coast, 6km across Scott Strait, remote Bigge Island harbours incredible galleries of ancient rock art. Canvases include scenes of Wandjina and Gwion Gwion (or Bradshaw) art, as well as more recent ‘first contact’ art: sailing boats and people wearing orange headdresses and smoking pipes that illustrate the first interactions between Indigenous peoples and foreign visitors to these shores.

Painted by the Wunambal people, the Wandjinas on the cave walls around Wary Bay are known as Kaiaira or Sea Wandjinas. The Gwion Gwions are completely different, elegantly depicted with long bodies and often adorned in tassels and headdresses.

After Augustus Island, Bigge Island is the second largest island in the Bonaparte Archipelago.