Walga Rock

Walga Rock, also known as Walgahna Rock and Walganna Rock, is a granite monolith situated about 48 km west of Cue, Western Australia, within the Austin Downs pastoral lease. It is one of the largest granite monoliths in Australia.

It is of profound cultural significance to Aboriginal people; the Wajarri elders are the acknowledged traditional owners. An extensive gallery of Aboriginal art exists within a cave in Walga Rock. While it is the subject of a great deal of research and fieldwork subsequent to a detailed examination conducted in the 1930s by the American anthropologist Davidson (who considered it to be "one of the most extensive galleries so far reported in Australia"), the first known European record of Walga is by Daisy Bates. Though she did not visit the rock and its gallery when travelling through the region in 1908, "Walga" is marked near the mining towns of Cue and Day Dawn and many other sites of Aboriginal significance on sketch Map 19 held at the State Library of Western Australia as part of her Special Map Collection.

Painting
Other than to the place and its ancient gallery, visitors are regularly drawn to an apparently anomalous painting of what appeared at first glance to be a European-tradition sailing ship. It appears superimposed over some of  the earlier  works and underneath there are lines of writing that to some resembles a Cyrillic or Arabic  script. While the Indigenous gallery is in itself remarkable, there has been a great deal of speculation about the painting, especially considering it is located 325 km from the coast. It has been argued that it was drawn by survivors of the heavily armed three-masted Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, commonly abbreviated to VOC) ships Batavia or  Zuiddorp; or that it represents a "contact painting" by Indigenous Australians who saw a ship on the coast and then moved inland. While there are many examples of Indigenous art depicting vessels on the Western Australian coast, including others showing what appears to be SS Xantho and possibly another steamer at Inthanoona Station east of Cossack, the Walga Rock painting is one of the most  inland examples.

Those believing the images represents a VOC ship, are of the opinion the middle (or main) mast of the three shown in the Walga Rock/Walganha Rock image had broken and fallen overboard. Ratlines (to enable the crew to scale the rigging), and some stays (holding the masts vertical) are depicted and seven gunports are evident along the hull.

Evidence now points to the image being that of a two-masted steamship with a tall funnel and Malaysian visitors to the Shipwreck Museum in  Fremantle  advised they felt the four lines  underneath the Walghana ship could represent Jawi (a Malay-Arabic script).

SS Xantho: inspiration for the Walga Rock ship image?
Of the two-masted colonial steamships operating in the north-west of Australia, SS Xantho owned by the controversial pearler and pastoralist Charles Edward Broadhurst is the most likely inspiration for the  Walga Rock painting. Research indicates the Walga Rock "gunports" may not be false at all, rather they are most likely square or rectangular  scuttles (port holes) that can be opened like a gunport. These often appeared on  passenger ferries designed to operate in  sheltered waters and were opened  for the comfort of its passengers when travelling in calm waters and when it got too hot below decks. When SS Xantho was built in 1848 as a ferry, reference was made in its contract to it being similar to PS Loch Lomond which is known to have rectangular ventilation ports, for example.

The first European account of the Walga Rock ship image appeared in the Christmas Edition of the Geraldton Guardian in 1928. In looking to who the artist or artists may have been, research conducted by mid-west historian Stan Gratte, based  on interviews with "old Cue residents" and local sheep station identities the Ryan brothers, indicates the Walga Rock painting was produced around 1917 by Sammy "Malay", also known as Sammy Hassan.

Apparently a "Malay" (the name generally but incorrectly describing indentured labourers who came to the north west from the islands north of Australia), Sammy Hassan is known to have camped for many years at Sammy Well outstation on the north east end of Dirk Hartog Island at an outcamp that still appears marked on station maps and some charts as "Sammy Well". It was considered that Sammy Hassan could have been one of many hundreds of indentured "Malay" pearl divers who were transported to north west Australia in the early 1870s. Of these, 140 boys aged between 12–14 were transported on SS Xantho from Batavia, for example. Some "Malays" were abandoned by Broadhurst at Geraldton when SS Xantho sank in 1872 and many others suffered a similar fate three years later in Shark Bay. Research into the possibility the lines of writing were Arabic added further to the Ryan's belief that the artist was Sammy Hassan.

Despite some sources linking Sammy Hassan with the image, others disagreed with the 1917 date, however, with some believing the image was from the turn of the century.

Shark Bay identities also disputed Sammy "Malay's" link with the Walga Rock image, for local legend has it that he received a shark bite while recovering gold coins (which he regularly presented to the Dirk Hartog Island station owners) from a wreck near his camp; and after dragging himself back to his hut died from blood loss, accompanied only by his dog.

Further, though accepting the image is likely to represent SS Xantho, in her most recent research anthropologist Esmée Webb disputes the Sammy "Malay" connection believing it to be a Yamaji "warning story" about pearlers capturing Aboriginal men and women and marooning them on offshore islands. In 2020 the many claims and theories surrounding the Walga Rock ship image up to that time were examined and presented in a paper appearing in the Great Circle, Journal of The Australian Association for Maritime History entitled "The Walga Rock Ship: Chronicle of a Century-Old Unsolved Mystery".

In that work numerous unresolved issues, including the identity of the artist, the date the ship image first appeared and the discrepancy between the Shark Bay legend that Sammy died from the effects of shark bite at his camp on Dirk Hartog Island and the Ryan Brother's account that he moved to  Walga Rock and produced the  painting in 1917, were not resolved.

Research recently conducted by Denis Cherry MD has cast considerable light on Sammy Hassan and his life in Western Australia nonetheless. Dr Cherry has traced an application from Sammy seeking permission to marry an Aboriginal woman 'Mary Ann'  dated  October 1906 and posted from Pindar near Cue. Cherry has also found evidence Sammy Hassan was born in Singapore, had arrived in the Colony around 1890 and died from old age at Cue hospital in the early 1930s. While Dr Cherry's research is ongoing he has resolved two issues outstanding after the publication of the 2020 Walga Rock paper in the Great Circle: First,  Sammy Hassan was living in the Walga Rock-Cue-Pindar area in the early 20th century,  and second, having arrived in the colony well after SS Xantho sunk he was not one of the many "Malays" who  the pearler C.E. Broadhurst brought to the  north-west. While Dr Cherry’s research also indicates there may have been another man described as ’Sammy Malay’ (or similar) in the mid-west pastoral industry, he is presently working to resolve the matter.

Though a man called 'Sammy Malay’ was certainly at Shark Bay and a ’Sammy Malay’was in the Walga Rock area and living in the company of Aboriginal folk at the time the Ryan Brothers stated  he produced the ship painting at the ancient gallery there, the question who produced it and why it was painted remains unresolved.