Devil’s Rock (Maroota)

Devil’s Rock, located at the Maroota Historic Site south of Wiseman’s Ferry (now called the Guragalung Gayanayung Aboriginal Place and gazetted as an Aboriginal Place) was used for initiation rituals, and possibly also totemic increase rites. It was considered by Fred McCarthy to be one of most important engraving sites in the Sydney-Hawkesbury region, because of its planned composition and the line of dots linking the two Ancestral Beings.

It’s said that the local Dharug people called the area “Devil’s Rock” in the late 1820s when the Great Northern Road was being constructed in an attempt to dissuade the British from going to this important and sacred site. However, it’s more likely that the local Aboriginal people avoided certain areas in which there were engravings, calling them “Debbil Debbil Rocks” or Devil’s Rocks (Stanbury & Clegg).

…it is not surprising that when, many years ago, the Great Northern Road to Newcastle via Wiseman’s Ferry was being made the remnant of the Aborigines who lived in the Maroota district always avoided a certain part of the country. It is said they regarded it as a “Debbil Debbil Rock”. It is unlikely that any of the blacks living at the time had ever seen it, because in those early days the local Aborigines had been in contact with the white race for a number of years, and with the break-up of tribal life had discontinued many of their old customs, and apart from perhaps a solitary survivor amongst the old men had no direct instruction in tribal lore”.

W.J. Walton, An Aboriginal Devil Rock (1932)

The engraving site has a total of 83 figures connected by 89 tracks, with most of the engravings situated between the two Ancestral Beings: Baiame and his one-legged son or brother, Daramulan. The engraving techniques used indicate that the figures were engraved at different times, and over a long period of time (McCarthy 1983). As well as the main rock platform, there are more figures across a number of smaller sites to the west and to the north-west.

Main Devils Rock platform (McCarthy Series 3)

The most prominent and one of the largest figures is that of Baiame, at the northern end of the Devils Rock site.

The deity figure is has some unusual features, including two ears and pits decorating its body, and was described as…

…an ancestral being just under 14 ft tall, in a stiff spread-eagled pose. Fingers, toes and bars are shown on the limbs, and a girdle on the body. Four rays form part of a forehead band or headdress. Four eyes and, most unusually, two large ears, are shown on the head. Eight lines of pits in the basin technique, to indicate a cicatrice or painted design, are shown on the body, together with several small right-angled lines. The penis is decorated with a line of seven dots and a bar, evidently the pattern of a painted design.

To the south of Baiame is a fish…

…and a “ground bird, like a scrub turkey, almost 6 ft long, with an unusually small tail, broad bifurcated leg and large eye, standing over a clutch of six eggs in a line”.

Below these two figures is another significant – and unusual – engraving of an emu with a clutch or nest of eggs: “a unique composition in the Sydney-Hawkesbury district”.;

Below the emu are three bird tracks leading away from the emu nest (enhanced photo below by Jo McDonald).

A small figure a bit further to the south was described as one of two kangaroos (also described as “an earless doe or young animal”), which has an unusual shape. It may be part of a “kangaroo hunting composition in which a man 7 ft 6 in high has thrown a boomerang at two leaping kangaroos”. Or perhaps a more peaceful scene:

a little bird standing beside an oval representing a waterhole; the boomerangs and sword clubs beside the pothole, suggesting that the men laid their weapons on the rock while grinding their axe blades, and the bird with an egg inside its body

The second leaping kangaroo is just front of the smaller one, with a boomerang under its tail.

Below the kangaroo is a man, who may have thrown the boomerang at the kangaroos – or placed it on the ground. He has a “thin, long body” and is quite weathered compared to the other figures. (A lady in a dress is superimposed on this figure.)

To the south of this hunting composition is the hind portion of a leaping kangaroo.

At the southern end of the main Devils Rock platform is “an unusually interesting composition of an ancestral being with an emu, and shield, mundoe and another figure”.

The ancestral being, 20 ft 3 in high, is wearing an eight-rayed headdress (with a bar across the top and a dot below it) and also a girdle and several necklets. His oval body is decorated with six vertical rows of oval and circular basin-shaped pits 1 to 2 in long, 4 to 1 in wide, or 1 in in diameter, which evidently indicate a cicatrice or painted pattern on his chest and stomach. His back is demarcated by a line pattern. His small h:ad is un-aboriginal with its long face, pointed nose and bearded mouth. One eye is shown, and the Adam’s Apple prominence is clearly indicated on the exceptionally long and thin neck. He has one arm bearing three long fingers. His legs are very short for such a long body and one bears four toes. His erect and large penis has the shape of an uncircumcised organ, the bar across which apparently represents either a painted band or the gland inside the foreskin. Beside this great hero is a large emu 10 ft long, with a barred neck and leg, and a well marked foot to which is attached an indeterminate figure. Inside the emu is an oval shield, 3 ft long, of the well-known coastal type.

Below is the “cicatrice or painted pattern” on the body of the ancestral being.

The last figure along this main series is a kangaroo: “a fine leaping wallaby or kangaroo 5 ft 3 in long”.

Speared Kangaroo (McCarthy Series 3)

At the top of the rock platform (but documented by McCarthy as Series 2) is another unusual composition: “a well proportioned leaping kangaroo 9 ft 4 in long, struck by six boomerangs on the body and by a spear in the stomach”. (Superimposed on this figure is a sailing ship.)

Kangaroos (McCarthy Series 1)

At the north-western corned of the rock platform is a small group of figures. There are two kangaroos, one of which is well formed – “a leaping wallaby or kangaroo”.

A second wallaby or kangaroo was described by McCarthy as “a headless wallaby 2 ft long”.

The third figure is an “an indeterminate tailed figure”.

There are 54 axe grinding grooves around the site. A fourth group of engravings (McCarthy Series 4) is on a separate rock platform, which forms part of the Maroota western rock art sites.

Post-European Contact Art at Maroota

Devil’s Rock also has motifs from the colonial era depicting European contact (rare in the Sydney region), including a sailing ship, a man in a top hat and a woman. The most distinct figure is a woman in a crinoline dress, which is superimposed on a tall man.

Superimposed on the speared kangaroo is ship:

The sailing ship is engraved surprisingly over the kangaroo struck with boomerangs and a spear, although there is a spacious area of rock suitable for engravings surrounding the kangaroo, almost suggesting that the other figure was no longer of importance to the Aborigines… The one in the Devil’s Rock group has weathered to the same colour as the rock surface and of the kangaroo over which it is engraved, and there is no reason to doubt that it was carved by the Aborigines; it is typical of the craft used on the Hawkesbury River in the 1790’s and early 1800’s when it was probably engraved.

Hornsby Council has produced a short video with Darug Elders explaining the significance of the site, how it got its name of Devils Rock and some of the many figures engraved here.