News & Events >> July 2008
Wollemi yields its ancient secrets
The Sydney Morning Herald, 15th July 2008
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.
Professor Tacon, a Griffith University rock art expert, said he believed the reptilian head was probably an elaborate headdress.
Forgotten Creek is pure and clear. Near the rock shelter with the rat woman is a deep pool with huge round boulders on the creek bed. In the rock shelter the rat woman charcoal drawing has deteriorated badly..
While Mr Brennan and other archaeologists recorded details of the finds, Mr Deveridge, Mr Cartier and Mr Jessop set off to scour more unexplored country in search of archaeology.
The walkers discovered four sites, including a rock shelter with as many as 100 motifs on its walls. They found a stencil of a child's boomerang, children's hand stencils, and stencils of two of the biggest hands anyone had yet seen. There was also a mysterious figure with numerous heads, and large numbers of human figures.
Proper recording of the sites will have to wait until another expedition.
Only 5 per cent of the Wollemi wilderness, which begins 60 kilometres from Sydney's central business district, has been surveyed. Everyone involved in the project knows hundreds more sites are yet to be found.
Mr Brennan said the end of each expedition was always difficult because in such rugged terrain it was impossible to feel the surveying was ever done. There was always the question: "Shall I go up here just a little bit further?"
Back in time
September 1994 Rare Wollemi Pine discovered.
October 1995 Eagle's Reach, a rich archaeological site, discovered.
May 2003 Eagle's Reach recorded by scientists, who note 206 individual motifs. Oldest stencils believed to date back 2000 to 4000 years; oldest charcoal drawings at least 1600 years.
September 2004 Another 56 Aboriginal sites found, 17 with rock art.
September 2006 Stone axe with wooden handle discovered, as well as Gallery Rock, one of the most significant rock-engraving sites in south-eastern Australia.
June 2008 Archaeologists record details of the area they name Forgotten Ridge and Creek.
- by James Woodford
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