<< Text Pages >> Wollemi National Park Rock Art - Rock Art in Australia

Submitted by Andy B on Friday, 01 August 2008  Page Views: 23535

Rock ArtSite Name: Wollemi National Park Rock Art
Country: Australia Type: Rock Art

Latitude: 33S  Longitude: 151.000000E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
 no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
 no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
 no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
 no data
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A chance discovery by a bush walker has become one of the most significant finds of Aboriginal rock art in Australia's history. A cave containing more than 200 paintings, some believed to be 4,000 years old, was found by a bush walker in 1995 in a remote part of the Wollemi National Park, north-west of Sydney.

But the inaccessibility of the area meant that it was not until May 2003 that a research team was able to investigate the site.

The bush walker is thought to be the first person to have laid eyes on the paintings since the last Aborigine left his or her mark there almost 200 years ago.

The exact location of the site - a rock shelter 12 metres long, six metres deep and one to two metres high - is being kept a secret to stop it from being damaged by either vandals or well-meaning sightseers.

Anthropologist and archaeologist Dr Paul Tacon (Tacon), who led the expedition, said there were 11 layers of more than 200 paintings, stencils and prints in different styles and spanning a period from around 2000 BC to the early 1800s.

Humans and god-like human/animal composites as well as realistic and symbolic depictions of birds, lizards and marsupials feature in the paintings.

There are life-size, delicately drawn eagles, kangaroos and an extremely rare depiction of a wombat, Dr Tacon said.

"This is the most significant discovery in the greater Sydney region in probably about 50 years," he said.

"It's also in pristine condition and it's like a place that time forgot."

IMPORTANT NOTE: Location given is very approximate to protect the site's location

Note: Half man, half animal carvings found in Wollemi research, see latest comment
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 11.1km N 0° 37-6-0471 Stone Row / Alignment
 24.1km SSE 157° 45-3-2147 Stone Row / Alignment
 45.5km NNW 348° 37-5-0206 Stone Row / Alignment
 51.5km SSE 157° Calga Springs site Rock Art
 54.6km SSE 152° Girrakool Man Rock Art
 57.0km SSE 152° Bulgandry engravings Rock Art
 59.5km SSE 153° Woy Woy site Rock Art
 67.4km S 170° Berowra Waters Petroglyphs Rock Art
 70.1km SSE 158° Echidna Engravings Rock Art
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 73.6km SSE 161° West Head Road engravings Rock Art
 75.5km S 169° Gibberagong Rock Art
 75.7km SSE 161° Emu-In-the-Sky Rock Art
 76.0km SSE 168° Terrey Hills Emu Rock Art
 76.8km S 169° Bobbin Head petroglyphs Rock Art
 78.4km S 187° 45-4-0217 Stone Row / Alignment
 79.8km SSE 166° Terrey Hills Engravings Rock Art
 80.0km SSE 167° 45-6-0224 Stone Row / Alignment
 88.0km SSE 166° Bantry Bay Engravings Rock Art
 89.2km SSE 164° Gumbooya site* Rock Art
 90.1km SSW 209° Faulconbridge Emus Rock Art
 93.7km SSE 165° Grotto Point Petroglyphs Rock Art
 94.9km SSW 213° Lawson Engraving Site* Rock Art
 95.0km S 169° Berry Island* Rock Art
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"Wollemi National Park Rock Art" | Login/Create an Account | 4 News and Comments
  
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Wollemi yields its ancient secrets by Andy B on Friday, 01 August 2008
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THERE is a ridge and a creek in the heart of the 500,000-hectare Wollemi wilderness which are so remote they have never been officially named by Europeans.

An archaeologist, Wayne Brennan, and his colleagues have called these wild features Forgotten Ridge and Creek and have just completed the first archaeological survey there. They have uncovered six archaeological sites, including a rock shelter with about 100 drawings and stencils.

Brennan knows of only one party of bushwalkers - Rik Deveridge, Mark Jessop and Michael Cartier - who had been able to reach Forgotten Ridge before last month's survey.

The bushwalkers had discovered three rock art sites and on their return they contacted Mr Brennan. They reported an ancestral figure drawn with charcoal - either a half-man half-goanna or someone wearing an elaborate headdress.

A few kilometres away they had found another strange motif - possibly a half-rat half-woman - and two ancient red-ochre hand-and-arm stencils. At a third site they found more than 30 axe-grinding grooves.

Mr Brennan, who along with Paul Tacon and Dr Matthew Kelleher has spent the past five years searching the Wollemi for its secret prehistory, quickly set about getting to the unexplored area.

Past discoveries in the wilderness area have included thousands of charcoal and ochre drawings, a one-hectare rock platform named Gallery Rock covered in engravings, two rare stone axes and a number of timber tools, including a firestick.

"Normally anthropomorphic figures are quite rare … but in the Wollemi there are some very interesting combinations - eagle man … a bat-human, half-kangaroo half-humans, a rat woman, and now a possible goanna man," Mr Brennan said.

He and his team were flown by helicopter into the area last month for a five-day survey, accompanied by the Herald, and immediately viewed the first site found by the bushwalkers - a large axe-grinding platform.

"This would have been a nodal point, a meeting place," Mr Brennan said. "The axe is not just about sharpening and shaping. It's about waiting, down-time, talking. This waterhole would have always been kept clean. There would have been serious talking and axe grinding. It would have been about connecting with the place and the people."

The following day the bushwalkers guided Mr Brennan into a rainforest and under a series of overhangs. Coming around a corner was a large rock shelter, and on the wall was the suspected goanna man.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/wollemi-yields-its-ancient-secrets/2008/07/14/1215887540835.html
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Wollemi find an Aboriginal seat of the gods by coldrum on Thursday, 24 May 2007
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Wollemi find an Aboriginal seat of the gods

A ROCK platform in the heart of the Wollemi wilderness may be the closest thing Australia has to Mount Olympus, the seat of the gods in Greek mythology.

Last spring archaeologists discovered an enormous slab of sandstone, 100 metres long and 50 metres wide, in the 500,000-hectare Wollemi National Park. It was covered in ancient art.

The gallery depicted an unprecedented collection of powerful ancestral beings from Aboriginal mythology.

Last week the archaeologists who found the platform, Dr Matthew Kelleher and Michael Jackson, returned with a rock art expert from Griffith University, Professor Paul Tacon, a Blue Mountains-based archaeologist, Wayne Brennan, and several of their colleagues. Two senior members of the Aboriginal community - a Darkinjung sites officer, Dave Pross, and a Central Australian artist, Rodger Shannon-Uluru - and the Herald joined the expedition.

For most of the day the engravings are almost invisible. In the low light of dawn and dusk the images are briefly revealed.

The team had five days to document 42 figurative motifs, and by the first evening Professor Tacon, Mr Brennan and Dr Kelleher had recognised a gathering of the gods. The supreme being Baiame and his son Daramulan were both there. Near them is an evil and powerful club-footed being, infamous for eating children.

Several ancestral emu women and perhaps the most visually powerful of the images - an eagle man in various incarnations - are also depicted.

"The site is the Aboriginal equivalent of the palace on Mount Olympus where the Olympians, the 12 immortals of ancient Greece, were believed to have lived," Professor Tacon said.

"This is the most amazing rock engraving site in the whole of south-eastern Australia."

Even in famous rock art regions in the north it is extremely rare to see big gatherings of ancestral beings depicted together, he said.

It is almost impossible to imagine how humans could travel through, let alone survive in, the Wollemi. It is dissected by deep canyons and in places almost impassable.

And yet the archaeologists have found hundreds of sites in the past five years. It seems almost certain that the engravings are part of a much larger network of songlines and stories, the full meaning of which is all but lost.

Pross was struck by the complexity of the tale that the drawings must once have told.

"They reckon we didn't have written language," he said.

"We didn't have a, b, c, d but we had a written language in these engravings. They would have been able to read from site to site to site."

In many cases the figures seem to point to other important geographical features or major cultural sites, and possibly to patterns in the stars.

The team also found evidence of everyday existence, such as rock shelters that still bear signs of their occupants - hand stencils, a partial stone axe head, flakes from stone tools and at the back of a cave timber that could only have been stacked by a person.

"The only thing we haven't found out here is a living community," Dr Kelleher said.

smh.com.au.
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Laser Scanning Paper by Andy B on Monday, 16 October 2006
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RECORDING AND MODELLING AN ABORIGINAL CAVE PAINTING : WITH OR WITHOUT LASER SCANNING?

Fryer, J.G. a
Chandler, J.H. b
and El-Hakim, S.F. c

a School of Engineering, University of Newcastle, Australia -
b Department of Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University, UK
c Visual Information Technology (VIT) Group, Institute for Information Technology, National Research Council Canada (NRC)

Link to PDF of paper:
http://www.commission5.isprs.org/3darch05/pdf/3.pdf
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Funding rejection 'threatens' Wollemi art research by Andy B on Monday, 16 October 2006
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Fieldwork in what is believed to be one of the most significant rock art sites in Australia has stalled after the Federal Government declined to fund further research, archaeologists say.

Over the weekend scientists exploring the Wollemi National Park north-west of Sydney announced the discovery of numerous shelters, many with rock drawings and stencils up to 5,000 years old.

They also discovered what is believed to be the first hafted stone axe found in south-eastern Australia, estimated to be about 150 years old.

But now the archaeologists are being forced to look for international funding to continue their work and cannot even afford a day trip to the remote area to protect vulnerable sites from damage by bushfires, says team co-leader Professor Paul Tacon of Griffith University.

He says the largest and most significant site, an engraved platform a few kilometres from where the axe was found, is at immediate risk.

The platform features large eagle and koala figures and images of what are believed to be ancestral beings.

"There is a lot of vegetation around the edge of the platform and fallen tree limbs which will provide fuel [for bushfires]," Professor Tacon said.

"If we get a really hot one in the next few months, there is a risk that some of the engravings we've discovered won't be there any more.

"Ideally it would be good to ... just go in to clear it up but at the moment we don't have any funding to do anything at all."

More: ABC News, New South Wales
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