There was plenty to see, with paintings superimposed over others, all fading under the influences of dust and weather, but all placed in the invidious position where trying to do anything approximating restoration would probably do more harm than good.
There was a lengthy pause there as Roy talked to whoever wanted to talk to him, and I waited until those conversations were breaking up before crossing to check whether we were supposed to be taking him back to Laura. From conversations along the way I gathered the tour bus had come up from Cooktown via Battle Camp, and would presumably be heading of to the Tablelands or Mossman, so our presence would save the driver going back to drop the guide in Laura.
The inquiry produced the news that, yes, we were to drop him back at base, and that once the tour party had left he'd take us over the top, though the top remained an undefined concept.
With the tour party heading back to their bus, we headed further up the slope to some smaller sites, passing a couple of itinerant sightseers on the way, and reached a one where the track was, well, not quite barred, but a sign indicated that unauthorised persons should not proceed beyond this point.
As we proceeded to ignore the instructions one assumed we were now authorised, and I learned that the sign was there because the trail hadn't been cleared or prepared after the end of the wet season.
This, from what I can gather, is the issue with the rest of the sites. Unlike Split Rock, they're only accessible by four wheel drive, and that means getting people out on the tracks to make sure the vehicles can get to where they're supposed to go. The sites are on the Split Rock side of the Laura River, so the first issue after the wet season has finished is to wait until the river goes down. Split Rock might be easily accessible from the sealed highway, but until they've finished the high level bridge it's inaccessible from Laura, and the tours had only resumed the previous week.
All that explained the fairly rough going as we made our way up the escarpment, across the plateau on the top, over to Turtle Rock, a spectacular lookout over the Palmer country, and back down through the Gugu Yalanji galleries, the last of which were quite spectacular, being nestled in a position that was more sheltered from dust, wind and water and relatively inaccessible. The National Parks and Wildlife Rangers had apparently been around the area fairly recently, but it seemed we were the first outsiders to visit this particular area this year.