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The only thing that distinguishes Grahame Walsh's home from any other in suburban Brisbane is the eerie silhouette overlooking his letterbox. It depicts a wanjina - a mysterious ancient figure painted on cave walls in Australia's remote northwest. But the figure merely hints at what lies inside the two-story brick house: hundreds of thousands of images of some of the country's most extraordinary pieces of rock art, including the famous Bradshaw paintings, many of them unseen by non-Aborigines until Walsh trekked through hostile, lonely terrain to photograph them.

For his work in recording and interpreting the fragile art, Walsh received a doctorate of letters last year from the University of Melbourne. But his conclusion that some of the paintings found in the Kimberley region are too sophisticated to have been painted by Aborigines has angered many. Walsh shrugs off allegations of racism, claiming his work will be better appreciated in more reasonable times: "I see myself as working for people who haven't been born yet,'' says the nuggetty 60-year-old.

Another passion of Walsh's has stirred deeper animosity. Time has learned that Walsh has in the past collected ancient Aboriginal bark coffins, complete with the bones they protected. In the 1970s he bought a demountable shed for the backyard of his outback station in western Queensland to store his collection of the rare cylinders, which he calls "assemblages." He installed climate control and a radar alarm system, and placed the bark coffins in airtight boxes to stop death beetles from attacking his skeletal charges. Walsh claims that he rejected a $A1 million offer from an overseas collector for one of the bodies, which he has described as the Australian equivalent of the pharaonic mummies from Egypt's Valley of the Kings.

Had it not been for his "persistent personal efforts and unassisted financial expenditure," these items would have "vanished to obscurity," he has claimed. But in mid 2000, when representatives of the local Bidjara people asked Walsh to repatriate his collection (as has become common practice among museums both in Australia and overseas), Walsh had some conditions. In a confidential letter obtained by Time, he offered to hand over the assemblages in exchange for a payment of $A100,000 to his rock art research facility, in recognition of his care of the remains, and a guarantee that the bones would be appropriately stored.

The proposal upset the Bidjara. "We got the s__ts, naturally,'' says traditional landowner Lionel Fraser, of Roma, in western Queensland. "Walshy wouldn't come near me after, because I told him I would punch him in the mouth.'' Walsh says he has hidden the bones in a cave in the Carnarvon Gorge region, about 600 km northwest of Brisbane, and will not reveal its location unless he is satisfied the remains will be properly cared for.

Walsh's case is not unique. Queensland authorities believe many more caches are secretly held by people who think they will take better care of the remains than would the traditional owners, or who have recognized their potential value to illegal collectors. In response, the Queensland government last year passed some of Australia's most comprehensive laws on possession of Aboriginal remains and artifacts. It is now illegal for anyone to conceal the location of Aboriginal remains from the state government, or to possess them in any circumstance after the traditional owners have sought their return. Breaches can attract fines of up to $A15,000.

"It really is quite ghoulish for anybody to seek to hold on to human remains," says Queensland Natural Resources cultural heritage unit director Paul Travers, who helped draft the law. "The legislation recognizes that Aboriginal people own their human remains. The approach of saying these remains have some scientific value is just outdated.''

Walsh contends the remains will not be properly cared for if they are returned to the Bidjara, and that their case for repatriation is a mockery. "They don't even know who (the dead people) were, let alone the boundaries of the country (they died in).'' he says. Walsh is talking "bulls__t," says Fraser, who has arranged for land to be set aside for a "keeping place" for the remains. "The stuff he knows about rock art and Aborigines was taught to him by my family. If they weren't our bodies, I wouldn't be running around trying to get them back.'' Fraser's request is simple: "We want our people back in the area they came from and let them rest in peace." There's likely to be more conflict among the living before the dead gain their repose.

Email Rory_Callinan@timeinc.com.au

• Rory Callinan
• A prominent rock-art expert and an Aboriginal group are at loggerheads over the fate of unburied bones