[1][2] During his epic circumnavigation of Australia in 1802–1803 Matthew Flinders[3] found bamboo frameworks, lines of stone fireplaces, pieces of cloth and the stumps of trees cut down with metal axes, at a number of places along the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

It was here that he learnt from Pobassoo, the captain of the fleet, that Macassan praus came to the coast of northern Australia every year on the north-west monsoon winds to collect and dry trepang or bêche de mer which they then sold to the Chinese.

Macassans had probably started to visit the northern Australian coast before 1650[5] but Dutch East India Company documents suggest that the intensive catching and processing of trepang for the Chinese market probably began in about 1750.

[6][7] Macassan involvement in the industry ended in 1906 when the South Australian Government, which administered the Northern Territory at that time, restricted the issuing of licenses to locally-owned vessels.

This is shown by the large numbers of dugong and turtle bones in middens on the Coburg Peninsula that date from the time of the Macassan trepang industry[22] and an increased marine focus on Groote Eylandt.

[26][20][21][27] Oral tradition also provides accounts of Aboriginal people working for Macassans on trepang sites and undertaking voyages on praus to the Celebes and further afield.

[2] When Macknight and Grey recorded the site in 1967,[32] two Aboriginal informants, Munggurrawuy (a Gumatj custodian) and Mawalan (a relative of Yumbul and Dhatalamirri), were able to explain how the divisions within the pictures of the praus represented different parts of the vessel: the crews' quarters, the galley, the eating space, the store and the water tank.

These pictures show that Yolngu visited trepang sites and spent enough time on praus to learn the various parts of the vessels and where the crew lived and ate.

[2] The stone pictures at Wurrwurrwuy that depict aspects of the Macassan trepang industry lie on an open rocky shelf about ten kilometres south east of Yirrkala in Eastern Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.

The area is bounded to the north by a small creek: on the west by a strip of dense coastal vine thicket and to the east and south by the sea.

[2] This Wikipedia article was originally based on Wurrwurrwuy, entry number 106088 in the Australian Heritage Database published by the Commonwealth of Australia 2018 under CC-BY 4.0 licence, accessed on 13 October 2018.