This small, signposted Aboriginal engraving site at Longueville Park has two figures; the largest one depicts an emu. It’s an unusual shape, as W.D. Campbell noted when he recorded this rock art site in 1899:
There is here cut an emu, which is portrayed in an unusually elaborate and artistic manner, and six feet from it there is outline of an oval figure, three feet eight inches by two feet four inches. Six feet from this is and the first-mentioned figure there is a footprint fourteen inches by five inches. The whole of the group is lightly cut.
Fred McCarthy in his 1983 Catalogue of Rock Engraving documented the figures as “a casual series, probably depicting an emu hunt. The figure of the emu is unique in its posture and single line legs, and is animated and well posed.” He described the oval figure as a shield “lacking line decoration”.
The emu has been described as a totemic figure to the Dharug who clan inhabited this area, which “occurs only in a small band along the foreshore on the northern side of the harbour and in the Lane Cove and Parramatta River Catchment areas, and then disappears until re-emerging in Ku-ring-gai National Park.” There isn’t reliable data to support this claim, especially with the likely loss through urbanisation of many rock art sites between Longueville and Ku-ring-gai Chase.
The oval figure has also been described as a fish, but it does not appear to have a tail or any fins.
Getting to the Longueville Park Emu engraving
The signposted site is located within Longueville Park, which is accessed from Stuart Street.
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