Fast Fact Tag: Kimberley

Boomerangs occur in very old Kimberley rock art, but the often-repeated claim of a simply “20,000-year-old boomerang image” is more certain than the current radiometric evidence allows.

Mud-wasp dating places the broader Kimberley Irregular Infill Animal Period at roughly 15,250–11,150 BC. Boomerang stencils occur within that early sequence, but the age of an art style is not automatically the age of every stencil.

One specifically studied boomerang stencil, DR013_09, has dated mud-wasp nests underneath the pigment. DR013_09 is the researchers’ catalogue/motif identifier — site DR013, motif 09 — not an official title for the artwork. The younger underlying nest shows that the stencil must be younger than about 11,150 BC. The motif is also overpainted by Tassel Gwion figures.

Other genuine Kimberley boomerang stencils are also documented. Rock Art Australia publishes original stencil photographs, and the 2025 Pundawar Manbur study records further examples including motifs #115, #165, #407a–b and #104, while motif #127 is a Gwion figure with held and raised boomerangs. The safest statement is that boomerangs appear in very old Kimberley rock art, while the date of any particular image must follow its own dating evidence.

No. “Boomerang” is better understood as a family of related regional implements than as one standard object. Size, weight, curvature, cross-section, edge shape and balance varied markedly according to place and purpose.

Nineteenth-century sources already recognised these differences. In 1878 R. Brough Smyth distinguished the returning Wonguim from the heavier non-returning war boomerang, Barngeet. He also contrasted Victorian boomerangs, which could weigh about ten ounces, with Western Australian kylies that were thin, sharply edged, angular in outline and often only about four ounces.

Later systematic classification makes the regional pattern even clearer. Australian Museum analysis identifies five dominant morphological groups — Common, Central Australian, Kimberley, Lake Eyre and Cooper Creek — together accounting for about 84% of specimens in the classification examined. The Central Australian form, for example, is asymmetrical and club-like and cannot return.

Even where boomerangs were used, therefore, there was no one-size-fits-all design. Regional environment, intended use, local tradition and trade all influenced what a “boomerang” looked like.