We’d come to the art site via the Barrk Sandstone track, through some of the best Kakadu scenery you can see. I walked around taking in the rock art pieces and their stories.

I looked at the hand prints for a few minutes, they were clean and simple, just hands like any others. Except for one important detail: they were made twenty thousand years ago. Twenty thousand. It’s an inconceivable amount of time. And yet, they could have been made yesterday, they looked just like my hands.

Standing in that same spot where they must have stood while making those prints was like feeling a ghost, more than paint on rock. I really had a moment there, connected to that echo of other people, long ago. I don’t know what you call it – an epiphany? Maybe not, I don’t know really. I’m not sure I really thought anything, other than we are all just people, even with twenty thousand years between us.

Views from the Barrk Sandstone walk