Kowara Road Macropods

Summary: An Aboriginal engraving site near Kowara Road in Somersby, which has five figures including two unusually-shaped macropods.

  • Site type: Rock engraving, Water Hole
  • Number of motifs: 5
  • Motif/s: Bird, Boomerang, Dingo, Indeterminate figure, Kangaroo
  • Quality: 3/5
  • Condition of site: Good, Siltation
  • View site sketch
  • Year first recorded: 1960
  • Originally Recorded by: Ian Sim
  • Sim Reference: Sim Collection Site 2/45
  • Ian Sim, Archaelogical Sites in the Sydney Region – A Record of Field Surveys 1958-1973 (“Sim Collection”), Site 2/45 (Somersby), p.13

A small Aboriginal engraving site which was recorded by Ian Sim in his Sim Collection as comprising: “bird, boomerang, koala, kangaroo, footprint”. The site was later documented in more detail by an Environmental Impact Assessment in 1951, and the description of the figures changed to “a bird with a long beak and a line above its head, a boomerang, a koala (?), a dingo (?) and a large footprint (?)”. Since these recordings, most of the engravings have been lost to encroaching soil and vegetation.

The small pothole has a pecked water channel, but any axe grinding grooves are covered by moss.

1X3A7877 LR Kowara Road Macropods

Nearby are the two figures, in close proximity.

1X3A7884 LR Kowara Road Macropods

One could be a native cat or dingo?

1X3A7872 LR Kowara Road Macropods

…and this one a wallaby or kangaroo?

1X3A7874 LR Kowara Road Macropods
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