Ubirr is located in the East Alligator region of Kakadu National Park

Kakadu National Park

Kakadu National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia, 171 km southeast of Darwin.Kakadu National Park is located within the Alligator Rivers Region of the Northern Territory of Australia. It covers an area of , extending nearly 200 kilometres from north to south and over 100 kilometres...

 in the Northern Territory

Northern Territory

The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...

 of Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, and is famous for its rock art. It consists of a group of rock outcrops on the edge of the Nadab floodplain where there are several natural shelters that have a collection of Aboriginal

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....

 rock paintings, some of which are many thousands of years old. The art depicts certain creation ancestors as well as animals from the area such as barramundi

Barramundi

The Barramundi , also known as Asian Seabass, is a species of catadromous fish in family Latidae of order Perciformes. The native species is widely distributed in the Indo-West Pacific region from the Persian Gulf, through Southeast Asia to Papua New Guinea and Northern Australia. Known in Thai...

, catfish

Catfish

Catfishes are a diverse group of ray-finned fish. Named for their prominent barbels, which resemble a cat's whiskers, catfish range in size and behavior from the heaviest and longest, the Mekong giant catfish from Southeast Asia and the second longest, the wels catfish of Eurasia, to detritivores...

, mullet

Mullet (fish)

The mullets or grey mullets are a family and order of ray-finned fish found worldwide in coastal temperate and tropical waters, and in some species in fresh water. Mullets have served as an important source of food in Mediterranean Europe since Roman times...

, goannas, long-necked turtles, pig-nosed turtles, rock ringtail possums, and wallabies.

From the top of Ubirr rock there is a panoramic view of the floodplains and escarpments that is especially beautiful at sunset.

Ubirr is approximately 40km from Jabiru

Jabiru, Northern Territory

Jabiru is a town in the Northern Territory of Australia. It was originally built in 1982 as a closed town to house the community living at Jabiru East near the Ranger Uranium Mine eight kilometres away. Both the mine and the town are completely surrounded by Kakadu National Park.- Overview :Jabiru...

 along a sealed road. The road is low lying so access can be restricted during periods of heavy rain. A short walk from the car park takes visitors past the main art sites to the foot of Ubirr Rock.

The rock faces at Ubirr have been continuously painted and repainted since 40,000 BCE. Most paintings there were created about 2000 years ago. Some have been repainted right up to modern times. There are three main galleries of art accessible to visitors. National Park rangers, many of them Indigenous, give talks at all of these sites.

Main gallery

The main gallery is perhaps the most photographed, and contains many breathtakingly beautiful examples of "X-ray art". Also in the main gallery can be seen paintings of white men with their hands on hips, and, high up, Mimi spirits, who are so thin that they can slip in and out of cracks in the rock. It is a puzzle how the artists managed to reach these bits of rock to paint the Mimi spirits. The local explanation is that the Mimi spirits painted the pictures themselves, and brought the rock down to ground level to do so.

At the Northern end of the main gallery can be seen a painting of a Thylacine

Thylacine

The thylacine or ,also ;binomial name: Thylacinus cynocephalus, Greek for "dog-headed pouched one") was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger or the Tasmanian wolf...

, or Tasmanian tiger, which has been extinct in the area for about 2000 years, and attests to the antiquity of the paintings.

Rainbow Serpent Gallery

This is the most sacred site at Ubirr, and is traditionally a women-only site, although this rule is relaxed for non-Indigenous tourists. This is the spot visited by the Rainbow Serpent or "Garranga'rreli", during her path across the top end of Australia, during the Dreaming. As she crossed the land, she "sang" the rocks, plants, animals, and people into existence. This path, or songline

Songlines

Songlines, also called Dreaming tracks by Indigenous Australians within the animist indigenous belief system, are paths across the land which mark the route followed by localised 'creator-beings' during the Dreaming...

, is still a sacred path to the Indigenous people who live in Northern Australia.

Panorama from Ubirr