Rock engravings, Carnarvon Gorge

Hidden in the rugged ranges of Queensland’s central highlands, Carnarvon Gorge features towering sandstone cliffs, vibrantly coloured side gorges, diverse flora and fauna and Aboriginal rock art. This is a powerful womens' fertility site - I'm not sure the word erotic even applies - ultimately it's the fertility of the earth that we are seeing here; note also the engraved net motif which occurs elsewhere within this massive art complex as a white painted image among red hand stencils.

Axe grinding grooves

Look closely and you can see the axe grinding grooves in the sandstone bedrock in one of the many dried out rain water pools adjacent to Mt Banks in the Blue Mountains National Park. Almost every depression contains multiple grooves which have been revealed by the continuing drought.

Water in the pools was used to whet the grinding process to polish and shape the axe blank and a man could sit for many hours sharpening a fine axe. Each groove represents the manufacture of a single stone axe head which was then hafted to a wooden handle. The earliest grooves may date from around 14,000 years before present. Stone axes continued to be made until soon after white settlement in 1788 when they were swiftly replaced by steel hatchets.

Mt Banks was named by the explorer George Caley in 1804 to honour his patron Sir Joseph Banks the noted English botanist, and marks the furthest westward point of his futile attempt to cross the Blue Mountains.

Prehistoric rock engraving

I rediscovered this hand sized circle engraved into the sandstone under a layer of rotting leaves on the cliff edge at Katoomba. After trying some ordinary shots for about half an hour, the late afternoon sun slanted through the cloud for a few seconds and revealed it in relief. The second photo shows the view from the cliff edge with the engraving in the foreground in front of the rocky spire. You can stand on top of the spire, carefully, and look out over the vast space to the cliffs on the other side of the valley at Sublime Point - breathtaking.

The Gundungurra people occupied this part of the Blue Mountains in the recent past and it may date from that period of more intense use beginning around 3-4,000 year ago, or from the end of the last ice age around 10,000 years before present when regular seasonal use appears in the archaelogical record or even from a period of earlier intermitent occupation around 22,000 years BP.

Engravings like this one were made with stone tools by first pecking a series of holes and then abraiding the connecting walls, you can see a small remaining section of the left. It is one of only two known circular stone engravings in the Blue Mountains and like many religious objects its simple form belies its deeply sacred nature.