One of the best-known and most-visited Aboriginal sites in the Blue Mountains, Kings Tableland Aboriginal Place was once a camping and meeting place of great significance to the Gundungurra people. The area contains 123 axe grinding grooves, as well animal tracks engraved on the wall of a rock shelter. The elevated Kings Table (where you’ll find the Kings Table trig station) also provides sweeping views over the Jamison Valley and the Wild Dog Mountains.
Grinding Grooves
The majority of the grinding grooves are located around a number of pot holes on the main (signposted) sandstone platform, and a few are around the trig point.
Another, single grinding groove is located a hundred metres to the south of the trig.
Aboriginal Shelter and Art
An east-facing rock shelter on the western side of the gully has a charcoal drawing (now too weathered to make out) as well as five kangaroo, two bird/emu tracks and two small, crescent-shaped lines (not all of these can be easily seen).
Archaeological excavations of the Kings Tableland Aboriginal Place shelter uncovered over 3,000 artefacts, and carbon-dating of the deposits indicates that the shelter was used as a campsite more than 22,000 years ago. This makes it one of the oldest known Aboriginal sites in the Blue Mountains.
Getting to Kings Tableland Aboriginal Place
The Kings Tableland Aboriginal Place is in Wentworth Falls, and is reached via a walking track at the end of Queen Elizabeth Drive which is between a locked gate and the carpark of a private property. Follow the track for about a 100m and you’ll get to a National Parks sign.
You’ll soon reach a junction, where you veer left for find the shelter and rock carvings and continue straight ahead to the rock platform above for the grinding grooves.
The walk is less than a kilometre for the two Aboriginal sites, or about 1.6km if you head out to the trig point and a nice vantage point further along the ridge from the trig.
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