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.
Near this engraving, on a more vertical section of Elephant Rock, is a face. Or the upper part of a face. Like the ant/spider, it is very unusual, and while the pecked lines suggest the engraving is of Aboriginal, it was not documented by any of the early Australian anthropologists.
A short distance from Elephant Rock and only recorded fairly recently is an Aboriginal engraving of a man.
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