Prison tree, Derby

There is a tradition that aboriginals were incarcerated inside this ancient tree by white colonial forces. But our guide reckoned the practicalities of squeezing men into the space made it unlikely when it was easier ( and more awful) to chain them together by neck chains.
This boab tree is thought to be about 12 to 15 hundred years old.

Carvings in the spongey moisture retaining trunk last for hundreds of years only growing deeper and larger with time.
It may have had special significance to local first nations people. On the side of the tree there looked like the remains of a round head and stripey aura of a Windjana image - but maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see.
We had a remarkable trip into the Kimberley region, covering 800km in the day!
The highlight was sloshing along a subterranean river, scrambling over bright pink marble boulders and keeping a weather eye out for fresh water crocs ( that don't eat people). There was a suspicion that the arrival of poisonous cane toads in the area may have reduced the population of crocs, which makes them only the most recently devastated Australian native animal to succumb to the source of the unstoppable tide of cane toads.

The extra is our close encounter with a croc in Wandjina gorge.