Formally gazetted as an Aboriginal Place in 2014, Shaws Creek Aboriginal Place near the Nepean River was once a meeting place for people from across the Sydney basin: “the scene of intense and diversified human activity in the Aboriginal past” (Eugene Stockton, Grace Karskens and Michael Jackson). Shaws Creek Aboriginal Place is thought to be the site of an early conflict with settlers in 1805, which resulted in the deaths of 7-8 of Aboriginal people.
In the Shaws Creek area (but not signposted) is an Aboriginal engraving site with two kangaroos and a set of kangaroo tracks (which are hard to see) – and what may be a third kangaroo, or a non-indigenous carving of a dog.
Best known are the engravings above the Shaws Creek rock shelter KI (Figures 7 and 8). It shows two kangaroos, one larger than the other and five pairs of kangaroo tracks traversing the rock platform, perhaps suggesting a hunt. There is also an engraved dog, long considered by archaeologists to be non-Aboriginal in style and technique.
Stockton, Karskens & Jackson, Yellomundee: A Human Landscape
The two kangaroos or wallabies are the most obvious figures.
Commonly described as a greyhound, and “long considered by archaeologists to be non-Aboriginal in style and technique” (including McCarthy), Eugene Stockton, Grace Karskens and Michael Jackson argue it may in fact be indigenous in origin, engraved at a time when dogs were used by the settlers to hunt kangaroos. They refer to an engraving carved in a similar style at the Castlereagh Neck.
There was a traditional depiction of a kangaroo in simple figurative style and round-grooved technique that has been further touched up with a metal axe. Alongside was another kangaroo with sharper grooves executed with a metal axe. Its style differed from that of the traditional one, being drawn partly in perspective, with rounded limbs and belly, hind legs separate. Bunyan enquired of old time residents who had long been familiar with the engravings. The story emerged that about 1830 or 1840 the Howell patriarch who owned all the land thereabout had given a steel axe to a local Aboriginal man, a friend of his, who tried out his axe in touching up the old engraving and executing a new one beside it.
Stockton, Karskens & Jackson, Yellomundee: A Human Landscape
The kangaroo tracks are much harder to see.
Artefacts at Shaws Creek
A large rock shelter along Shaws Creek just above its confluence with the Nepean River has a deep deposit with a large quantity of stone flakes and over 600 bone fragments (which were excavated in 1979 and 1980). Two nearby rock shelters yielded 6,355 and 7,374 artefacts, and another six sites were found along the mountain bike trail which runs through the Yellomundee Regional Park.
Axe Grinding Grooves
A number of axe grinding grooves sites have also been identified within the Shaws Creek Aboriginal Place, along the Nepean River (including at Castlereagh Neck, a small sandstone gorge on the Nepean River) and along Shaws Creek.
Corresponding to the numerous axe grinding grooves along the Nepean were the hundreds of edge-ground axes/hatchets recovered by avid collectors from the 1880s on, and especially in the 1930s. This area was very likely the major source of axes/hatchets for the Sydney region. This was truly, in Grace Karskens’ words, ‘a powerhouse of axe production’ made possible by the abundance of cobbles of basalt and hornfels becoming exposed in the banks of the entrenching river, by the outcrops of Hawkesbury Sandstone suited to grinding and by the ready supply of water to wash away the slurry.
Stockton, Karskens & Jackson, Yellomundee: A Human Landscape
On the same rock platform as the rock engravings are ten grinding grooves.
Fish Trap on the Nepean River
Although no evidence remains, McCarthy in the 1940s documented a fish trap at Castlereagh Neck at its narrowest point, formally called Blacks Falls, where there is a pebble bar with rapids.
Two roughly parallel rows of large boulders across this bar which are believed to have formed the basis of a weir for catching fish. Logs, which are washed down by the stream, if placed against these boulders to form a weir of two walls, would have formed simple traps in which the imprisoned fish could be speared with ease.
McCarthy (1948), The Lapstone Creek excavation: two culture periods revealed in eastern Blue
Mountains in Records of the Australian Museum p.22
Getting to Shaws Creek Aboriginal Place
The signosted Shaws Creek Aboriginal Place is at 810 Springwood Road in Yarramundi, and has a small carpark just before the bridge over the creek. Walk down the firetrail road beyond the locked gate to the recreation area, where there are toilets and a large picnic shelter. The engraving site is not signposted; it’s on the opposite side of Springwood Road, on a small rock platform about 150m up the road from the carpark, and a short distance in from the road.
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