Summary: A ritual Aboriginal site near the America Bay Track, which features a large Daramulan (ancestral hero)

Below and to the west of the main America Bay site is a representation of Daramulan, an ancestral creation being (and according to some mythologies, the son of Baiame and Bootha) as well as a number of additional figures.

engraving mccarthy platez fig3 America Bay - Daramulan site
The Darumalan figure is over six metres long and a metre wide, with one leg (Darumalan has only one leg, and is said to possess a deep thundering voice). He was described in detail by McCarthy: “His bird-like head has a long and open beak-like mouth, five or six eyes, and a pointed spur a the back. On the middle of his neck is what appears to be a pair of human forearms and hands: the upper one has ill-defined fingers, the forearm extends across the neck, and the elbow juts out on the girdle across his waist. The penis, marked with a tranverse line, is long and sinuous and ends in a single line at the edge of a small pothole…
AWAT9417 LR America Bay - Daramulan site
montage2a stitch LR America Bay - Daramulan site

Within the Daramulan figure is an oval-bodied skate, or stingray.

AWAT9712 LR America Bay - Daramulan site

Below his foot is a boomerang, and next to the boomerang is a mundoe (another seven mundoes above the figure lead away from the rock towards Topham Hill, a very significant area with multiple engraving sites).

Next to the Daramulan figure is a bream-like fish (“no eyes, poor tail, arc across body, and an arc 19″ long along its top side”.

AWAT9715 LR America Bay - Daramulan site

Below his foot is another goanna (Campbell uses the term iguana, a term used by the early European settlers for monitor lizards, which eventually became corrupted into the word “goanna”).

AWAT9726 LR America Bay - Daramulan site

The last figure is a man with “broad shoulders, outspread arms slightly upraised, right one truncated, left one straight ended, straight body tapers to his hips, belt, straight legs outspread… it is not certain whether he is wearing a headdress on a long shaft with a rounded oval which has a short diagonal bar in it, or whether this design really is his neck and head”. Unlike most of the other engravings, the man is very weathered and hard to make out.

AWAT9727 LR America Bay - Daramulan site

A small distance away, but on the same rock platform, is a second fish (described by McCarthy as a leatherjacket).

img 4123 lr America Bay - Daramulan site
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