[2]: 46 [3][6] 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 D. S. 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.