This deep and well protected Aboriginal rock art shelter is below a ridge which overlooks the Hawkesbury River (Deerubbin).
From the top of the ridge there are extensive views over the Hawkesbury River (photo: Philip Orr).
The site gets its name from the most prominent motif within the shelter, a two-masted sailing ship. (Australia is regarded as having the most examples of maritime contact rock art in the world.)
The ship is probably the HMS Lady Nelson, a 61-ton, three-sliding-keel brig commissioned in 1799 which was used to transport grain from the Hawkesbury River to Sydney and coal from Newcastle in the early 1800s.
Indigenous rock-art depictions were made from memory so often we see unusual combinations of features, making precise identification of vessels challenging and often impossible. Nonetheless, many detailed images can be described according to type. Only a few rock-art depictions of watercraft can be precisely correlated to particular known vessels…
Among those that are confidently attributed to Aboriginal artists, however, are both a drawing (shown opposite) and an engraving of what may well be HMS Lady Nelson, the little 60-ton brig that, in the words of the Sydney Gazette, served the colony for more than a quarter of a century, contributing more to its exploration and settlement than any other.
Paul Tacon
There are many more rock art motifs in the shelter, including three hand stencils on the roof in the middle section.
There are another four hand stencils on the back wall of the shelter.
There are also two much fainter hand stencils in red ochre.
Drawn in red ochre on the wall at the western end of the shelter is a figure resembling a fish.
Also in red ochre is another figure which seems to also depict a fish; both have a very similar shape.
Superimposed on what seems to be a wallaby or kangaroo is an indeterminate motif in red ochure
Also drawn in charcoal are two more wallabies/kangaroos.
A small charcoal figure was described by Bob Pankhurst (who documented this shelter in the 1970s) as a bird.
More information]
- Paul Tacon – On the rocks: ships at Aboriginal rock-art sites (2012)
2 Comments
James · March 15, 2026 at 2:28 am
Seeing that ship has me questioning what I’ve always believed about Greater Sydney’s rock art!
I don’t exactly really know why, but I’ve always thought that so much of it would be many hundreds of years old, but, is the reality that much of what we can see today painted in caves and engraved on rocks was done as recently as during the 1800’s until whenever the last of the indigenous people around Sydney fell victim to the “colonial lifestyle”? Is most of this stuff only as “ancient” as a couple hundred years old?
Not saying it’s less impressive if so, but I suppose it does leaves me a bit disappointed at the same time.
oliverd :-) · March 15, 2026 at 6:17 pm
James,
Interesting question… and one I’ve thought about too.
There are many contact rock art sites around Sydney – some depicting ships, and others people wearing European attire. These motifs clearly date the art as being a couple of centuries old. Other shelter sites have been dated as being much older – up to a few thousand years. So I would suggest (as I don’t have the qualifications to be certain) that typically art is 300-800 years old.
But… this is an oversimplication. The Tall Ships site had many other motifs, including stencils, which I believe are older. And many complex shelter art sites have superimposed figures, which were likely painted over different periods.