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.
Just below the main site, down a rough track on a separate rock platform, is what McCarthy and Sim describe as 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).
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 small swamp-hen.
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