I discovered an ancient Aboriginal site over 15,000yrs old

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The long wait all year for my Pilbara fishing trip was just about over.
It was a week before the month before the trip i was sitting home addicted to watching “Time team” .
I was thinking how cool it would be to find stuff from yrs gone past. The difference between europe and here in Australia is that Europe has so much more history and stuff to find.
Here in Australia white man has only been here 200yrs so no much to find. On the otherhand the Aboriginals have been here for 40,000 yrs. Im my wildest dreams i never expected to descover ancient artifacts dating to older then stone henge but as you are about to see , i acually did.

Bags were packed, fishing rods and fishing gear packed and ready to fly up to Karratha. 1535klm north of my home in Perth for a weeks fishing the untamed outback.
My freind Salvotore owns a house up there and works on the gas plant.
The plan was to fish every day of the week and my mates wife (Amber) was happy with that as long as monday night were stayed home to look after there daughter ” Bella”. Bella was 2yrs old and Amber wanted a night out on the town with her freinds and we agreed .
The next day was monday and it got to around 9am and we were itching for a quick fish. We sat around a map and decided on a spot that we hadnt been before. It was a passage between the mainland and a island. We had to travel through the passave to get to the open ocean.
On the map wernt any water depths. It just said ” Uncharted” . Hmmmm sounded like an adventure!
It did say “Boat passage” on the map so we though we were safe. The area was called sea ripple passage.

We headed off and Amber gave us a freindly reminder as we walked out ” dont forget about looking after Bella, be home no later than 5pm!

We agreed and headed off to dampier (Whitnell bay boat ramp). We launched the boat and headed to sea ripple passage.

As we entered the passage we stopped and checked the water depth and the echo sounder read 7 meters, we were happy and proceeded to head into the passage then out to the open ocean.
Such beautiful yet harsh surroundings.

It was a beautiful day, pretty hot but beautiful surroundings. We caught a few mackeral and lots of sharks and it was now getting close to 3.30pm.

Salvotore then said “time to go guys ” We reeled our lines in and got positioned to head though the passage then back to the boat ramp. We headed into the passage at full throttle, big 40hp on the back of a little dingy and as im looking over the edge i see something that scares the life out of me I can see the bottom and its less than a meter deep!!!
I Yelled to Salvo to stop the boat , when we stop we realise how low the tide has got. Its about half a meter and its damm lucky i noticed or we could of been hurt. We thought the best idea would be to putt along real slow but we had around 2 klm’s to go to get to the other side and the deeper water.
After around 5 min of putting along we started to scrape the bottom and were stuck.
I suggested we get out which will raise the dingy a little more.
This was dangerous as we were surrounded with small sharks, stingrays and lots of stone fish that we could easly step on. We hopped out and started pushing. The idea was acually working! Me and Salvotore were pushing as hard and fast as we could. Every few steps we would spo a shark and had to jump in the boat. At one stage i seen a big turtle coming towards me and if i didnt move it would of cleaned me up. I dived into the boat. It scared me more than the sharks it came at me that fast.
I turned and looked around and noticed we had left Simon far behind. he was standing in knee deep water 100 meters behind us. We waited for him to catch up and we caught our breath.
We still had so far to go and the tide was going out so fast. This was a race against the time and we MUST win!
I think we all know that we wernt going to do it then finally the sound of the alluminium boat scaping the bottom confirmed it. This ment trouble, we were going to be stuck here for a long time and we had to be home to look after Bella.

We all hopped into the boat and the look on Salvos face said it all.
We sat there silent and i said well we better call Amber to let her know we are stuck.
Salvo got his mobile phone out and yep you guessed it no reception. I dont think i have heard any say so many swear words in so little time.
We were stuck in the middle of a 500 meter wide passage.
I suggested that we walk to the edge of the mangoves, walk up to the top of one of the hills and see if we can get reception. Salvotore and i made our way in shin deep water to the edge.

It was so amaising to see so many small sharks, rays, turtles and fish swiming through such shallow water. As we got to the mangroves, the mud was real thick and my thong broke. I said to Salvotory “you go on i will wait around these rocks ” .
I was standing on these rocks over looking the passage and i could see the stranded boat with simon sitting in it and i was watching all the splashes of turtles fish etc and was standing there thinging that this would of been such a great spot for the Aboriginals to catch there food. The silence was amasing and the odd sound of birds and the rushing out going tide was something that i will never forget.
I then looked down at my broken thong and noticed something that i will never forget. The rock right next to the one i was standing on had a rock carving. It was of a fish and very defined, this was insaine!! My time team dream may hae come true and i had a really good feeing that i may be the first person to see this in thousands of yrs because this spot was so hard to get to and you would only land in this exact spot if you got stranded.
I then walked around and all around me there were more and more and symbles that look like encient egyptians!!!
I could here Salvo coming down the hill and couldnt wait to show him but would he be to shitty to care?
As he approched i said “any luck with reception”?
He said nope and was so shitty. I said to him to come over and take a look at what i had found, he was really amasied but still to worryed about being stranded. I said to him that if Amber doesnt kill us can we come back and mark it on the gps and take pics so i can send the info in to see if i have descoverd this site.
We walked back to the boat and sat back in it. By now it was sunset, we had no lights, no warm clothes and no repellent to protect ourselves from sand flys etc.

I asked Salvotory when hi tide was. he said 11pm. This wasnt good at all. We sat there telling storys and taking crap to keep our mind off when Amber must be doing now. We all knew she would be worrys sick. It was now 6.30pm and we had no way of letting anyone know we were ok. The next delemer we had next was once its dark how would we see where we were going, we had no lights and there are along of submerged rocks etc. This was now very serious.

It was now 9.30pm and i put the gaff over the side to see if the water was rising and i seen something amaising! As soon as the gaff touched the water, the water lit up glowing green with each splash. I smacked the water and it lit up again all around my hand. This must of been some wierd form of algea or something. As bad as this experience has been its something that no money could buy and something i will never forget.

Around 10pm the sound we had been waiting for, the sound of rushing water. This was the sign the tide was coming it and it was coming from flying foam passage not far away.
The tide was rising! As we sat there in picth black we felt the boat rising and then finally break free from the botome and start drifting, occassionally we hi a rock or to that scared the crap out of me. last think we needed was a hole in the side of the dingy at night in these waters.
We stared the motor and put it down in the water a touch and made our way out to open water. We couldnt see a thing but somehow we made it back to the boat ramp. That trip back in totak darkness was the scariest tip i have ever done.
Once back at the ramp we spotted a very angry Amber and some recure guys waiting. To be hinest she wasnt as annoyed as i thought she would be , i think she was glad we were all still alive. We had alot of appologies to her and she was nice enough to let us go back the next day after i told here what i had found.
We took note of the tides this time and i took my good camera and took loads of pics and marked it on the gps.

After the rest of the week fishing catching some great fish….

i flew back to perth then email pics and gps to Dept of indigenous affairs.
What happend next was so amaising, the meausem and lots of people were so interested in the pics and story.
I got an email back from dept of Aboriginal affares with a pdf attachment. It was a form to fill out called a ” site recording form” I had done it!!!!
I filled it all out and listed gps location and got to a section asking to name the site!! There were also sections asking what was found on the site etc. This was insaine , my name will now be down in history as the person who descoverd this site.
The asked me to name the site in an aboriginal name if possible but i didint know any Aboriginal names. The site is located at sea ripple passage so i named it “Sea ripple rock art”

I have since learnt more about this site and the aboriginal tribe that would of done these rock engravings.
Its a real sad story acually………

Taken from this site….
http://www.creativespirits.info/ozwest/karratha/massacres-flying-foam-1868.html

In February 1868, an Aboriginal man was arrested for stealing flour from a pearling ship and chained to a tree by two policemen. That night, a group of Aboriginals rescued him and speared to death the policemen and a pearler camping nearby. At Roebourne, 15 pastoralists and pearlers were sworn in as “special constables” to arrest (mind this word!) the leaders of the rescue.
A group of these surprised an Aboriginal camp at the Burrup Peninsula on February 17th and opened fire. A second group shot Aboriginals as they tried to cross the Flying Foam Passage on logs. While official sources reported 5 to 10 Aboriginals killed, the settlers and Jaburara people counted up to 60. An entire tribe, a language, a people were erased.
There you’ll find a plaque which reads:

Hereabouts in February 1868, a party of settlers from Roebourne shot and killed as many as 60 Yaburarra people in response to the killing of a European policeman in Nickol Bay. This incident has become known as the “Flying Foam Massacre”.

I have also had some interesting finds on one of my photos below, this totally shocked te meauseam.
Now this is the most amaising!!!!!!!
You can see the “grindstone” used for grinding spinafex and the stone they use to grind is just leaning up against the other rock like it was left there from yesterday. A archeologist told me that would be around 10,000 yrs old

One day i would like to meet some of the Aboriginal people from that area and tell them about how i descoverd it.
We have to make sure we protect this rock art from the threat of mining in the burrup. These are as older thanstone henge yet the massive $$$ that the gas plants brining it is a threat to these great Petroglyphs.

These last few shots i were told wernt to be shown to anyone. I have since got permission to show them and think thats its a good way to bring attention to saving this history.
How the picture with what looks like an alien with a staff and the stars above his head WOW!!!!

And to top it all off, i now just had Sir Tony Robinson off the show that made me wish to find such a discovery happen signed an photograph i took at this exact spot. In his words “Amazing”