Summary: Two Aboriginal engravings on Elephant Rock near Patonga, including an intriguing carving of an ant, spider or "indeterminate bag-like object"...

Located near the end of Elephant Rock, a huge rock platform near Patonga, are two Aboriginal engravings. One of them was first described in 1966 by Ian Sim as “an indeterminate bag-like object with two projections at one end”. A couple of decades later it was depicted more elegantly by McCarthy as being an ant or a spider: a “Unique figure among the rare insects in the engravings as a whole”.

It’s hard to make out the two legs of the ant/spider, which was described by McCarthy as having “a half oval head pointed at the back, no eyes, triangular body with slightly convex sided and flat end, narrow neck, 2 narrow double line legs pointed forward in line with the body and the narrow end of one of them is tuned d.ownward, a single line curved leg pointed backward on each side of the body.

Engraving Mankind Group 149 1 Elephant Rock Engravings

Near this engraving, on a more vertical section of Elephant Rock, is a rayed headdress. Like the ant/spider, it is a very unusual engraving, which was documented by Ian Sim.

AWAT2122 LR Elephant Rock Engravings

A short distance from Elephant Rock and only recorded fairly recently is an Aboriginal engraving of a man.

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Aboriginal Sites by National Park

Hornsby Shire - which is the largest LGA in the Greater Sydney Metropolitan region - contains approximately 600 recorded Aboriginal rock art sites (and over 1,200 Aboriginal heritage sites). These date back from thousands of years to post-European contact art.
Red Hands Cave, Glenbrook (Blue Mountains)
The Blue Mountains National Park (and surrounding areas along the Great Western Highway) is thought to have over a thousand indigenous heritage sites, although much of the park has not been comprehensively surveyed. The Aboriginal rock sites in the Blue Mountains include grinding grooves, stensils, drawing and rock carvings.