This extensive Muogamarra Aboriginal engraving site near the Peats Crater Trail has over 40 figures, which include a whale and a speared man. The site was first documented by W.D. Campbell and later by Fred McCarthy, who recorded the engravings across six groups, or series.
McCarthy Series 1 (Campbell Plate 12, Fig 5)
This group has a “young whale” with a “long pointed head”; within the whale is a sword club and next to it is a boomerang and a small mammal (possibly a native cat) which has a “high humped body, straight belly, pointed finlike foreleg sloped backward”.
McCarthy Series 2
Included by Campbell in the same group, McCarthy recorded a narrow shield to the west of the previous group.
McCarthy Series 3
Also included by Campbell in the same group, McCarthy separately recorded a whale which is “long, poorly shaped, huge open mouth with long round ended jaws, no eyes, irregular oval body with a large concave indentation and then a hump on the dorsal surface near the tiny fish tail”.
McCarthy Series 4 (Campbell Plate 12, Fig 6)
There are only two figures in this interesting group: a speared man and the the legs and hips of a man, with a spear in his foot.
McCarthy described this “scene” as representing two men who were speared for breaking the law; Campbell noted the second figure resembled one at Bobbin Head (Bobbin Head Track main site) and another near Wondabyne (Mullet Creek Half a Man).
McCarthy Series 5 (Campbell Plate 12, Fig 7)
This small group also has two figures, which McCarthy suggested may represent a kangaroo hunt, with the dead kangaroo (which has partly weathered away) lying on the ground.
Next to the kangaroo is a man with upraised arms.
McCarthy Series 6 (Campbell Plate 12, Fig 8)
There a large number of figures in this group, which includes a line of speared fish.
Hunting tools depicted here include two clubs (a mushroom-headed club and a straight sword club), a hafted stone axe and a broad sword club.
As well as four fish there a number of other animals and marine animals: two flying birds, three eels and a manta ray.
Near the second eel is another set of human legs.
McCarthy Series 7 (Campbell Plate 12, Fig 9)
Along the same rock surface as the previous group is a “scattered group of fish and boomerangs”.
The figures include three sword clubs, the head end of a returning boomerang and a returning boomerang.
An additional figure doesn’t appear to have been documented by Campbell and McCarthy (or was not accurately recorded).
McCarthy Series 8 (Campbell Plate 12, Fig 10)
The last group recorded by Campbell and McCarthy has three figures. The most striking is a man with outstretched arms, who “is cut upon a rounded portion of the rock rendering it unusually conspicuous”.
Near the man is a an oval bodied fish and a sword club.
Additional figures
Campbell and McCarthy did not record four figures engraved on a vertical rock face at the eastern end of the site; these were documented in the late 1980s.
There are three emus and some form of marine animal.
This site was featured in Spiritual Connections, a video produced by Hornsby Council on the indigenous history of the area.
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