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Joseph Bradshaw was one of seven children of a
Melbourne farmer who, during the depression of
1890, at the age of 35, decided to set off for the
north-western part of Australia and establish
himself as a farmer in undeveloped country. In the
Kimberley, he received the right to use ca. 4,000
km² of unregistered land as pasture for
17 years. He set out in 1891 with a small group
of people to find and stake out the land based
on hand-drawn maps. The group got lost several
times on the difficult terrain, as is documented in
Bradshaw’s writings. Bradshaw not only described
important landmarks and river courses, but also
the rock paintings he encountered, which struck
him as both strange and mystical. They primarily
portrayed human figures and were completely
different stylistically from the rock paintings
of the Aborigines living in the area. After his
return, he presented his sketches to the Royal
Geographical Society, and afterwards the figures
he described became known as ‘Bradshaw figures’.
Roughly a century later, the originals were once
again discovered amid the rough terrain, and a
comparison with Joseph Bradshaw’s sketches
revealed his talent for artistic reproduction,
eliminating any suspicions that the original
drawings were merely the fantasies of exhausted
land hunters.