Mount Manning Shelter – a spectacular Yengo rock art site

The (mostly) well preserved paintings in the two adjacent Mount Manning rock shelters were most likely first seen by Europeans in the 1930s, and subsequently “chalked” in 1961. These markings were removed by the time that the Mount Manning Shelter was researched in the mid 1960s by Neil William Macintosh (professor of anatomy and anthropologist) . The site is thought to be the first Aboriginal rock art site to have been dated in Australia.

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The six ochre paintings in the southern shelter were painted around AD 1400, based on radiocarbon analysis of charcoal associated with matching ochre in the floor deposits of the cave.

The paintings include two anthropomorphs, a female and male echidna, a male dingo a second dingo. The figures are of ritual significance, perhaps associated with rain, lightning and fertility. Dingos and echidnas are also thought to be related to fertility rituals. Macintosh observed that (aside from the “excessively truncated arms and the two horns on his head”) the male horned anthropomorph resembled the Baiame figure at the Mount Ku-ring-gai Aboriginal Site.

The larger (male) anthropomorph has “has two small white eyes”, and a different number of digits on eacxh hand (“The artist was unconcerned with detail; the right hand has six fingers, the left four”). The right foot also has seven toes and the left six toes.

The second anthropomorph (“obviously female because of the well defined vulva”) and dingo on the left are a little more weathered.

Further along the cave are more paintings of a similar style, but much fainter – they are thought to be a replica of the first group.

At the very end of the cave are charcoal drawings of wallabies or kangaroos.

The paintings in the northern shelter are more recent, and believed to have been painted between 1750 and 1830 in a different style.

The northern shelter paintings are in charcoal, white and red ochre – and are much harder to discern. The motifs are generally of local fauna, and include snakes, eels, wallabies or kangaroos, stencilled hands, shields and a boomerang.

At one end of the shelter, Macintosh recorded five human hands (15-19) stencilled in white: “three are rights, one is left, and one shows only the finger tips because the original rock has crumbled away. However, he appears to have missed a superimposed, indeterminate figure in red ochre.

To the right of the hand stencils are eight snakes (23-26b): “Five of these are in simple outline, but three have elaborate heads, and of these, one has thirty four vertical infilling stripes on its body.”

A red eel has “with “well defined gills or cephalic fins (31); a red line leads from the mouth of the eel to a very small man infilled in red ochre (34) and he has a single cornu on the vertex of his head”.

Quite hard to see is a “complex series (35A) consisting of a graceful sigmoid shaped eel with elongated fins drawn in charcoal;
coiled once round the body of the eel is a charcoal line which runs over (is superimposed upon) a red infilled eel which tapers at the head and more so at its tail, but is swollen in the middle of the body; immediately above this is a slender white snake and some charcoal lines.

Just above the floor of the shelter is a faint but intriguing panel (35b) which…

appears to be out of character with the rest of the gallery.., It consists of multiple charcoal stripes, mostly vertical, but some are diagonal and fork or branch. Superimposed on these, are curvilinear white lines which sometimes can be traced as forming a net-like arrangement, and in one or two places vaguely suggest the outline of a wallaby and an emu. Perhaps they do represent nets for trapping fauna, perhaps they are mazes, or perhaps they are stylised or symbolised semantics and if so they are the only such representatives in these galleries.

The last group at the far end of the northern Mount Manning Shelter (42-45) were described by Macintosh as consisting of “a wallaby in white outline superimposed on another in white outline but almost obliterated, superimposed upon a red infilled eel of which the definition of the head is obscure; this in turn is superimposed upon an enormous red outlined eel with two transverse red bands across its body. A boomerang drawn in white outline overlays the red outline of the eel.” (Even with image enhancement the wallaby and boomerang are not visible.)

Under the dripline of the northern shelter are four axe grinding grooves and a spear-sharpening groove.

What’s also interesting is that there are (at least) twelve additional caves within 500m of this one – many seemingly more suited for shelter, cooking or painting – but none have been found to contain any evidence of Aboriginal occupation. Macintosh noted: “It must surely be significant that such a difficult and excessively secluded alcove should have been elected for these large and impressive paintings when other shelters nearby presented so much easier conditions of flat walls and floor, and rock faces of finer grain.”