Calga Daramulan

Summary: A rock engraving site in Calga with a Daramulan figure on rocky platform surrounded by swamp.

  • Site type: Axe Grinding Groove (AGG), Rock engraving
  • Number of motifs: 1
  • Motif/s: Daramulan, Deity
  • Quality: 4/5
  • Condition of site: Good
  • View site sketch
  • Year first recorded: 1979
  • Originally Recorded by: F.D. McCarthy
  • McCarthy reference: NARRARA Mankind Group 19 in Catalogue of Rock Engravings (1983)
  • McCarthy in Mankind Vol 3, No. 6 (1944). Fig 8. p.170.

A very distinct Aboriginal engraving of a “koala type” Daramulan on small rock platform near Peats Ridge Road. McCarthy stated that the figure “may not actually be a koaIa wearing a headdress, but it is probably a man of the Koala totemic clan impersonating the animaI, a not uncommon feature of animal figures in the Sydney-Hawkesbury engravings”.

1X3A7397 LR Calga Daramulan
1X3A7395 LR Calga Daramulan

There are a couple of axe grinding grooves and water channels around a small pothole above the Daramulan figure.

1X3A7390 LR Calga Daramulan
1X3A7386 LR Calga Daramulan

The site is on a very long shelf of rock in a swampy area; most of the rock has now been covered with vegetation.

1X3A7375 LR Calga Daramulan
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