One of the most impressive and accessible Aboriginal engravings in Sydney’s north, the Elvina Aboriginal Site lies just off the Elvina Track at West Head. A narrow and unsignposted walking track leads to an enormous tessellated platform – which is one of several (the site was originally called “The Tesellated Pavement”).
The Elvina Aboriginal Site engravings include a “large spiritual ancestor of the Daramulan type in the composite guise of hero and emu” which indicates that this is a ritual site of great importance. The emu is the totem of Daramulan, and he is associated with the two emus here. This site was regarded not as an isolated entity, but a part of many interconnected sites across the Lambert peninsula, including the Topham Hill Daramulan and the nearby Coal and Candle Creek engraving site.
Emu in the Sky (Dark Emu)
The Elvina Aboriginal Site is thought to have an astronomical connection – and forms part of a body of evidence that the Aboriginal people had a deep understanding of the motion of objects in the sky. One of the best-known Aboriginal constellations is the “Emu in the Sky” (or Dark Emu), which is formed by the Coalsack Nebula between the stars in the Milky Way. It was suggested by Hugh Cairns in 1996 that the engraving of the large emu at Elvina represents the Emu in the Sky – and not a real emu. This is based on how the legs trail behind the emu, a position unnatural for a real emu but similar to The Emu in the Sky.
Even more intriguing is that the time of year when the Emu in the Sky is correctly oriented to the engraving of the emu, is the same time that real-life emus are laying their eggs. (The emu in the sky is visible across the entire sky and orientated diagonally with the head up between March / April and July / August).
The link between traditional Aboriginal Australian culture and astronomy is explained by Ray P. Norris and Duane W. Hamacher in “Astronomical Symbolism in Australian Aboriginal Rock Art” (Rock Art Research, 2010). Bob Fuller, Ray Norris and Michelle Trudgett also explore the link between the Aboriginal cultural and the night sky in “The astronomy of the Kamilaroi and Euahlayi peoples and their neighbours“. The TEDx Talk by Duane Hamacher below at 6:47min provides a great explanation of the significance of the emu in the sky to the Aboriginal people.
Elvina Aboriginal Site engravings
Over fifty figures are scattered over the broad expanse of rock, most of which were documented by McCarthy in six groups or series.
Shields
Two of three shields in a group
Shield
One of three shields in a group (this one is the most weathered)
Small Man
A man only about three feet in height, "in a stepping posture, with his hands above his head". He has a tiny half-oval head, no eyes or neck, arms upraised. He has a straight right leg with bifurcated foot vertically downward, left leg bent at pointed knee, concave and conical foot outward as if stamping or tapping the ground in front of him, conical penis".
Koala
A"koala bear" posed as though climbing a tree and with a large human-shaped foot.
Fish
Large fish (6' 6" long)
Shield and Fish
Shield and fish with "pointed head, no eyes good tail".
Goanna
Goanna with a "long, conical head" and fin-like legs.
Shield
A "poorly shaped" shield
Boomerang
Narrow boomerang (18" long)
Group of Fish
Group of fish; are all different shapes and sizes.
Two fish
Pair of bream-like fish
Adult Emu
Large emu (11 feet high) standing upright, with "an irregular neck as if swallowing food"
Young Emu
Young emu with a conical head bent downwards as if feeding and three pointed toes on its foot.
Whale
A large whale (25 feet long) with long, conical head and a small (open) mouth
Ancestral Being
An enormous ancestral (19 feet long), which has a human foot on its hind leg, and has a bag of magical quartz crystals held or suspended from its fore-limb. A head decorated with a rayed head-dress was added later, and is superimposed on the long neck of of the deity.
Eel and Shield
An eel (with four bars across its body) and a man with upraised arms and a long straight-sided body.
Eel (Series 5)
Fish
A "broad fish" which has a "pointed head" and a "good tail".
Man (Series 5)
Man with roughly pecked figure
Indeterminate Figure (Series 5)
A"puzzling figure": a turtoise / turtle or platypus?
Shield (Series 5)
Shield indeterminate figure
Walaby (Series 4)
Wallaby (Series 4)
Wallaby (Series 4)
Part of Whale (Series 6)
Fish (Series 6)
Fish (Series 6)
Fish (Series 6)
Eel (Series 6)
Oval (Series 6)
A Large Serpent?
While McCarthy’s detailed recording of the Elvina Aboriginal site covered a total of 56 figures, one intriguing omission was the horizontal lines or stripes that were engraved along the length of a naturally occurring tesselation. This was noted by Stanbury & Clegg, who noted that “some long cracks or fissures appear to have been tranversely joined”.
This “figure” could be described as a serpent, with the body formed by the natural parallel lines in the sandstone.
Elvina Aboriginal Site Series 1 (Fig A)
At the south-west edge of the site are three shields, which vary in shape and size.
About 15m away on the edge of the platform is a man only about three feet in height “in a stepping posture, with his hands above his head”. He has a tiny half-oval head.
Nearby is a figure which looks very much like a Daramulan, but was consistently described as a a “koala bear” with a large human-shaped foot and “posed as though climbing a tree”.
In the south-west corner of this group are a group of 13 figures in close proximity. These include a large fish (6′ 6″ in length).
Next to the fish is a shield and another fish with “pointed head, no eyes good tail”.
A goanna is depicted with a “long, conical head” and fin-like legs.
A group or school of six fish are swimming together (the fish are all different shapes and sizes) and a “pair of bream-like fish”.
In this group is also a small and narrow boomerang (18″ long) and a shield which is “poorly shaped”.
Elvina Aboriginal Site Series 2 (Fig B)
On a large rock surface in the north-western corner (separated by a narrow crevice) is what may be a goanna (Fred McCarthy) or a possum (Bob Pankhurst; his photo used below).
Elvina Aboriginal Site Series 3 (Fig C)
Located at the northern end of the same platform as Series 1, this is considered the most significant group. Three figures close together comprise an ancestral being (deity) and two emus. The larger of the two emus (“The Emu in the Sky”) is eleven feet high.
It’s depicted standing upright and with “an irregular neck as if swallowing food”. It has a slightly curved leg with three big, pointed toes.
Facing away from this large, or adult, emu is a young emu. It has a conical head bent downwards as if feeding and three pointed toes on its foot.
Completing the trio of figures is an enormous ancestral figure, described by McCarthy as “a majestic figure perched above the emus” and “an extraordinary and unique spritual ancestor figure”. It’s hard to photograph, being 19 feet long… the deity has a human foot on its hind leg, a bag of magical quartz crystals held or suspended from its fore-limb.
The figure has a long neck; a head decorated with a rayed head-dress was added later, and is superimposed on the neck.
A short distance away is a large whale, which has a “large conical head with mouth open”. It has two dorsal fins and two ventral fins, and a good tail.
Near the whale are another two figures: an eel (with four bars across its body) and a man with upraised arms and a long straight-sided body.
Elvina Aboriginal Site Series 4 (Fig D)
About 40 feet to the north – on an isolated rock in the scrub – is a leaping wallaby: a “nicely posed animal with a fat body”.
Next to it on an adjacent rock is a pair of mammals (probably rock wallabies) which are “posed as though feeding”.
Elvina Aboriginal Site Series 5 (Fig E)
A strip of low vegetation separates these figures from Series 2 and 3. At the northern end of the long rock platform is an eel; it was described by McCarthy as having one “ear”, but actually two ears or fins.
Near the eel is a “broad fish” which has a “pointed head” and a “good tail”.
Near the middle of the platform is a man, whose figure is quite roughy pecked. McCarthy described him as having no neck or shoulders and truncated arms pointing downwards. Unusually, the figure has “1 eye inside head and 1 outside outline” and a “penis in the shape of an emu’s track”.
At the southern-most end are two more figures, one of them a shield and the other an indeterminate object.
Near these two figures is an unusual motif; McCarthy described it as a “puzzling figure” which might be a turtoise or a turtle, and he states it has also been described as a platypus. You can decide for yourself…
Elvina Aboriginal Site Series 6 (Fig F)
Situated on another large rock platform to the east, this group has eight figures scattered across a large rock surface.
One figure is described as being part of a whale, with just a fin and one side of the body.
A little further to the north are two “bream like” fish.
A third fish at the nothern end of this platform has a line protruding from its back, which was described as being a spear.
Nearby is an eel.
There is also a roughly-pecked oval figure at the southern end of the platform.
Stone Heaps
MCarthy in 1954 and later in his 1983 Catalogue documented “two series of round oval aggregations of small pieces of ferruginious sandstone” laid out in a circle between Series 1 and 2, which he argues “have not been formed by water rolling the stones together because if the action of the water had been strong enough to do this it would have washed the stone right down the slope on this part of the rock”.
He did note that “loose aggregations of stones occur elsewhere” – but not in the same pattern. There is another rock platform to the east which is loosely covered in loose stones.
The Great Snames (Cupule) Debate
A controversial topic surrounding the Elvina Aboriginal Site are the cupules, or small pits, of which there are thousands across several of the sandstone platforms. (Cupules are widely believed to be the world’s most common rock art motifs and can be found in large numbers in every continent except Antarctica.) Stanbury & Clegg suggested that these holes may “mark the position of astronomical bodies and that the whole area is a celestial map”, and he referred to them as “snames”.
Clegg mapped over 60 cupules, or snames, and using statistical analysis argued that snames are associated with petroglyphs. He invited two professors of geology and an equally senior geomorphologist to look at the Elvina Aboriginal Site, and none had a specific explanation for what natural processes would have created the cupules.
In response to this, Australian prehistorian and cognitive archeologist Robert Bednarik wrote rather scathingly:
He [Clegg] recounts how he found a phenomenon he had not encountered before and therefore named it, without comprehensively checking whether it was already known to science… Clegg needs to appreciate that this is not an issue of archaeology, where a Humpty-Dumpty terminology (words mean whatever we choose them to mean; Carroll (1971) can prevail because of the discipline’s non-falsifiable
status.
Bednarik essentially explains why based on natural weathering the pits at Elvina are “essentially natural phenomena… The result is a natural pattern of regularity, which the uncritical observer is likely to interpret as intentional…”
- Robert G. Bednarik, Cupules in Rock Art Research, Volume 25, Number 1 (2008), pp.61-100 [PDF]
- Robert G. Bednarik, On cupule interpretation in Rock Art Research, Volume 25, Number 2 (2008), [PDF]
- John Clegg, Science and Rock Art Research of the World in Exploring the Mind of Ancient Man (Festschrift to Robert G. Bednarik), Research India Press (2007)
Getting to the Elvina Aboriginal Site
While there is a National Parks sign at the base of the rock platform, the track to the engravings is not signposted. From the locked gate at the start of the Elvina Track, look for a walking track on the right after about 200m. It’s about 100m to the northern end of the main platform.
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