One of the most-visited engraving sites around Sydney, the Bulgandry Art Site Aboriginal Place is situated just off Woy Woy Road (the site is well sign-posted). A short walking trail leads to the engraving site. A wooden boardwalk circles the main site, with interpretative signage.
There are a number of figures – most of them located quite close together on the main rock platform.
The site is named after “Bulgandry Man”: a large engraving of a man thought to represent an ancestral hero, depicted with an impressive headdress. He holds a round object in his right hand, in his left hand is a boomerang or crescent-shaped object and across his waist is a decorated club. Bulgandry Man is stepping into a long canoe (or what is thought to be a canoe) – a motif rarely seen in engravings.
Bulgandy Man has been extensively photographed and documented: the photo from Ian Sim (below) clearly shows him holding a crescent-shaped object. ‘Bulgandry’ means ‘boomerang in hand’, although the object may not be a boomerang.
Overlapping a six metre long canoe is an engraving of a kangaroo.
Nearby is another kangaroo, with a small figure next to its tail.
There are a few fishes and an odd shape among the larger engravings.
Another fish has been speared.
At one end of the rock platform are some axe grinding grooves.
Series 2 (Fig G)
Just below the main site, down a rough track on a separate rock platform, is what McCarthy and Sim describe as possibly a dolphin – a “fine animated figure swimming with its head upward”. It’s also been described as more likely to be a shark, with a “rounded dorsal fin and broad belly” as well as a “heterocercal caudal fin” (Sydney Rock Art).
Series 3 (Fig H)
About 150m to the north-east, on a long ledge, are a couple more figures. A carving of wallaby is very worn and hard to see (or photograph), and next to it is a more obvious is a standing bird – possibly a small swamp-hen.
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