Darrell Lewis left school at sixteen and spent many years working in various jobs in remote outback places. In 1978 he enrolled at the Australian National University and by 1990 had completed a masters degree in archaeology and written two books on Arnhem Land rock paintings (The Rock Paintings of Arnhem Land, Australia : Social, Ecological, and Material Culture Change in the Post-Glacial Period, 1988, and The Shape of the Dreaming : The Cultural Significance of Victoria River Rock Art, 1988, with D. Rose) . Throughout the 1990s, Lewis worked primarily on historic surveys in the Victoria River district and has published other titles about his work. He enrolled again at the Australian National University, researching the history of the Victoria and Ord Rivers for a PhD thesis. In his most recent publication, Where is Dr Leichhardt? (2013), he looks at the history of speculation on the fate of the 1848 Leichhardt expedition and evaluates the evidence.
