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Department of Communit~ Servic.,q,s

ARCHAEOLOGY BRAnCH

CONTENTS:

Aboriginal Art in Central Western Queensland:

History of Recording.

Archaeology Branch Department of Community Services

and Ethnic Affairs G.P.O. Box 2210, Brisbane QLD. 4001

Telephone: (07) 22 42594

RANGERS:

Cairns P.O. Box 2044, Cairns Injune C/- Post Office, Injune Laura C/- Post Office, Laura Co en C/- Court House, Co en Townsville P.O. Box 5620, M.S. 0., Mt. Is a P.O. Box 309, Mt. Is a Bamaga Bamaga

Townsville

Rockhampton 35 William Street, Rockhampton

DISCOVERY

ABORIGINAL ART IN CENTRAL WESTERN QUEENSLAND:

HISTORY OF RECORDING.

Extract from "Art & Stone: Towards a Prehistory of Central Western Queensland".

Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis~ A.N.U. M.J. MoY'UJood (1979).

Considering the high density of sites in the area, it is noteworthy that none of the early exploring expeditions mention arto These were mainly concerned with establishing the commercial possibilities of new areas for stocking, and traversed areas quickly along drainage channels.

From the early 1860's however, when holdings were taken up and the

country was more closely examined during stock work, Europeans must have encountered siteso Then, as now, very little of this local knowledge would

have seen the light in published form. The earliest exan~le of dated vandalism found during my survey was 'J Hunt 1873', in a particularly isolated area.

The initial discoveries took some time to be more widely disseminated

as brief descriptions in newspapers or learned journals. The first such account appears to be that of T.S. Parrot, who in 1888 wrote to the Centennial magazine of his discovery of an art site 24 years earlier at the head of Planet Creek, in the Expedition Range. His description immediately established the character of central Queensland art.

"The cave is a very extensive one, and the sandstone is of variou.s colours, red, white and yellow. The paintings with which the walls are

entirely covered consist of aboriginal hands and feet, boomerangs, clubs,

nulla nullas, fishes, birds, and many other subjects; the whole skilfully worked out with chalks and ochre of different colours, the red on the white, the white on the yellow, and so on." (Parrot 1888:271).

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A report appeared in the Melbourne Argus of May lOth 1891, concerning

the Buckland Creek site, on the upper Nogoa River, and was later to be used

by Worsnop in his book The Prehistoric Arts, Manufactures, Weapons etc of

the Aborigines of Australia. He says -

"In Central Queensland, on Buckland's Tableland is Nardoo Creek on

the bank of which is a high cliff and, on its face is a magnificently­

executed picture, representing a sea of fire, out of which are stretched

dusky-brown arms in hundreds in every conceivable position, the muscles

knotted and the hands grasping convulsively, some pointing a wierd finger

upwards, others clenched as in agonies of death as though a host were

engulfed in a seething lake of fire • o •• ". (Worsnop 1897: 38) o

Aboriginal responses to enquiries about the site were interesting but

not informative -

"The natives in the neighbourhood have a horror of the place, and

when questioned declare that they can give no information about it,

saying that their white-headed blacks know nothing about it, nor even

their fathers". (Worsnop 1897: 39).

Stencils of feet, boomerangs, nulla null as, and axes were also described

as well as carvings of emu tracks, boomerangs, and snakes, and three large

painted figures in red. This isolated site has since been sporadically visited

and described to varying degrees, eogo Maitland 1894; Jenson 1926; Buchester

196 7; Morwoo d 19 76; Donovan 19 76 •

In 1900 Archibald Meston, the Protector of Aborigines for southern

Queensland, visited the upper Maranoa and Warrego areaso A child's burial

cylinder (QE ll/84c) and a number of boomerangs were collected and now

grace the Queensland Museum collections. Meston, also wrote of the many

caves and rockshelters on 'Warrong' Station, which contained both art

and burial cylinders.

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"These sandstone caves were the cemeteries of the aboriginals. On

the roof or sides of all caves containing the dead were the imprints of

hands done in red or white ochres. These hands were the oofailing signs

of the rock sepulchre •••.•••• all caves bearing those hand impressions

were sacred and none dared to disturb or desecrate them ooder penalty of

certain death." (Meston 1901:100).

This report stimulated further correspondance to The Queenslander

by A.S. Maclellan (1901), a former manager of 'Warrong'. Maclellan

wrote of Aboriginal art and burials at 'the Tombs' site on the upper

Marano a.

"Many a skeleton I saw in the caves there, and hand and foot

imprints and other impressions on the walls and roofs of the caves;

and fishing nets made out of fibre or bark. These caves served as

a vault for this wild race."

Immediately over the Great Divide in the Springsure area, ToWo

Biddulph had also noticed marks on the rocks and was sufficiently

interested to enquire locally about them. He records that -

"The Aborigines here can give no explanation about them nor do

they know by whom or when the rocks were so marked." (Biddulph 1900:225).

To the east in the Taroom area, similar finds were being noted.

W .Co Tibbets (1902 :225), wrote to the journal Science of Man, describing an art site located between 'Waterton' and 'Isla' Stations thus -

"The subject of the markings consists of many illustrations of

the human hand, iguanas, fish, etc., etc."

Here local questioning was a little more fruitful, information

from the oldest Aborigine in the area indicated an age for the art of

60 to 70 years.

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Vulvas and Excavation Trench - Native Well Site (Marwood 1977)

J.R. Chisholm now submitted a series of reports to the same journal

concerning art sites near Hughenden, in northern Central Queensland on

'Praire' and 'Mt Sturgeon' Stations. (Chisholm 1901a; 1901b; 1903; 1907;

1910; 1912) o The descriptions included references to drawings of bird

and human feet, hands, sketches of boomerangs, and carvings of snakes, emu

feet and 'heads with haloes over them'. Chisholm was particularly intrigued

by some aspects of the art, in particular -

"Why do the bird' s feet in the ancient carvings and drawings always

point upwards?" (Chisholm 1910:75) 0

\'~ben asked about the art, local informants replied -

"Blackfellow make em and go down longa ground o" (Ibid) •

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Apart from a brief note by Wilkins (1928:80) in his Undiscovered Australia, of stencils and pecked engravings near Torrens Creek, the area was not investigated again mtil 1980 when a site survey was initiated (D.Aoi.A. files CL, DK, DL, GJ, EK).

In the period 1909-18, interest i n , and the number of visitors to known sites, seems to have increased, if vandalism at the much-abused 'Black's Palace' area is anything to go on. Reports by surveyors and geological fieldworkers concerning Aboriginal art also increase towards the end of this periodo For instance, F.B. Campbell Forde, Deputy Surveyor General, wrote in 1918, of a stencil site in the Staircase Range, near Springsure, which he had first seen in 1883, on route to survey 'Babbiloora' Station . Similarly , W.G. Drane, Staff Surveyor, wrote from 'Cheshire' Station concerning the 'Black's Palace' on the Barcoo/Belyando Divide. His description probably reflects the general European ~ttitude towards such sites -

"The place is merely of historic value. It is admitted that no one even in the wildest f lights of imagination could discern the slightest t races of art o" (Drane 1918)o

He closes with an ominous precedent -

"I am forwarding per parcel post a painting of a hand, which may be of interest."

In 1937 the first of a great many touring expeditions to the Carnarvons was made by the Queensland branch of the Geographical Society of Australasia, under DoA. O'Brien. The enterprise was repeated in 1938 and 1940, and the results published by O'Brien (1939/40), Elkin (1940) and Goddard (1940/41). Goddard's account of the third expedition must rate as the first serious pub lished accomt of Aboriginal art in Central Queensland.

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Brief photogenic accounts of the art of this region appeared sporadically

throughout the 1940's and SO's, and still do (e.g. Anon 1976; Barrett 1946;

Brammel 1940; Frauca and Frauca 1967; Geary 1939; Henderson 1963; McKenzie

1977; Redmond 1963; Sutton 1967:. However, it was not until McCarthy (1960)

published a brief note jn Mankind on the Graceville and Cutzies Cave sites,

that scholarly interest again surfaced. The report suffered though, from

being based on second hand information: Of the photographs provided by a

local informant, that of Cutzie's Cave was subsequen tly published upside

down.

Hand and Axe Stencils, Central Highlands (Marwood)

Mulvaney's classic report on the work at Kenniff Cave an d the Tombs

in 1960, 1962 and 1964 also contains a section on the art of 'Mt Moffat 1 ,

'Emu Bends', and 'Mt Tabor', although 'the expeditions were archaeological

ln purpose' (Mulvaney and Joyce 1965:202)o The excavations, like those to

be undertaken l a ter at Cathe dral Cave by Tugby (Cleff 1965, 1977) and Beaton

(Beaton 1977), also have r e levance for the vexing question of the age of

t he art. At Kenniff's Cave, the evidence of ochre throughout the deposits

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indicated that "even the Pleistocene colonists possessed an aesthetic sense, whether they painted themselves, their implements or their walls." (Mulvaney and Joyce 1965:201).

Boomerang, Axe and Hand Stencils - Central Highlands (Morwood)

Three years later Dr. Eleanor Crosby, Curator of Anthropology at the Queensland Museum, published the results of her survey of art sites in the upper Dawson River area, near Taroom, 320 km east of the Warrego (Crosby 1968: 73-81). As well as dem:mstrating clear differences between up land and lowland s ites, particularly in colour useage, Crosby noted a stylistic relationship between this art body and that of Carnarvon Gorge and the upper Maranoa: It was suggested that this might apply throughout the Central Queensland Highlands (Ibid: 8) 0

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Crosby's successor, M.C. Quinnell, continued work on the art of the

area by undertaking a thorough recording of 44 art sites in Carnarvon Gorge,

beginning in 1969. (Quinnell 1975; 1976; 1977). These sites include sorre

of the largest and most spectacular art sites known from the Central Highlands

e.go The Art Gallery, Cathedral Cave. The recording and subsequent analysis

combined local knowledge of site distribution with an intensive fieldwork

programme: It yielded the most detailed description of a Central Queensland

art body yet published, and defined the general framework for future work

in the area.

Subsequent studies have been more limited in scopeo Marwood (1976)

published an account of three rock art sites on the upper Nogoa and Warrego

Rivers, including Goat Rock and the historic Buckland Creek Siteo The latter

also features as one of the eight sites briefly discussed by Donovan (1976:45-

51) , as part of an ethnohistorical/archaeological survey of the Nogoa Basino

In a recent article in Mankind, Beaton and Walsh (1977:467) show the potential

of Aboriginal art as a source of information about many aspects of prehistory,

including trade: They argue that shell pendants are represented in the

stencil art of some Central Queensland sites, and that these suggest that

a trade chain existed between the Carnarvon area and the far north of

Australia.

To summarise then, no information regarding the cultural context of

rock art in the area is available. Partially, this reflects a general lack

of interest by early colonists, which is t.mderstandable in the light of the

prevailing frontier ethics concerning Aborigines.

However, even when enquiries were made informants appear to have been

evasive (eogo Biddulph 1900:225; Wo rsnop 1897 :39)0 Donovan (1976:121)

reports a similar reluc tance for Aborigines to discuss their ways -

"The Aborigines were remembered as being reluctant to explain them­

selves and their activities, also preferring to address each other in their

own language."

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Grooved engravings of human feet, kangaroo, bear and goat tracks - Goat Rock

(Marwood)

Whatever the reason, the fact remains that this art body is totally lacking in contextual information. Despite evidence that much of this art i s relati vely recent and some is certainly post-European in age (stencils of European items were recorded), it i s as 'dead' as the 20,000 year-old engravings in Koonalda Cave or the 30,000 year-old art of the Upper Palaeo­lithic art of Europe.

In the 117 years since European settlement of the region, the general characteristics of Central Queensland rock art have been outlined. Apart from Quinnell's work on the art of Carnarvon Gorge, and Crosby's study near Taroom, available data has been minimal and of variable quality. This has not prevented speculation as to the place of Central Queensland in the

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development of Australian Aboriginal art and its inclusion, or exclusion,

from pan-Australian developments (e.g. McCarthy 1967:29; Maynard 1974:41).

Previously, work has also concentrated on the art of the eastern Highlands:

The art of the Central West shares many features with its eastern counter­

part, but both similarities and differences are informative.

REFERENCES

ANON. 1976. Art ••• but not always for art's sake. Sunday Mail Colour,

22 February 1976.

BARRETT, C. 1946. Carnarvon Caves: Little known Aboriginal art gallery.

Wildlife 8:315-18.

BEATON, J.M. 1977. Dangerous harvest. UnpUblished Ph.D. thesis, A.N.U.

BEATON, J.M. and G.L. Walsh. 1977. Che' -ka-ra. Mankind 11(1):46-7

BIDDULPH, F.W. 1900. Myths of the Springsure Aborigines. Science of

Man Jan. 22:225.

BRAMMEL, C. 1940. Forgotten Paradise, the Carnarvon Ranges of Queensland.

Walkabout 8:29-34.

BUCHESTER, K.J. 1967. Wanderings of a gem hunter. The Australian

Lapidiary Magazine 4(3):3-10.

CHISHOLM, J.R. 1901. Science of Man 4(5):80.

CHISHOLM, J.Ro 1901. Science of Man 4(9):133.

CHISHOLM, J.R. 1903. Science of Man 5(12):193.

CHISHOLM, J.Ro 1907. Science of Man 9(6):94.

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CHISHOLM, J.R. 1910. Science of Man 12(4):75.

CHISHOLM, J.R. 1912. Science of Man 13(10):203.

CLEGG, J.K. 1965. A note on the stone industry of Cathedral Cave, Carnarvon Gorge, Queensland. Mankind 6:2 37.

CLEGG, J.K. 1977. The Four Dimensions of artifactual variation. In Stone tools as cultural markers. Wright, R.V.S. (ed.), A.I.A.S., Canberra: 60-6.

CROSBY, Elanor. 1968. An archaeological site survey near Taroom, South­eastern Queenslanda Mem. Qld. Mus. xv, pl. 2:73-8.

DONOVAN, HaL. 1976. The Aborigines of the Nogoa Basin. An ethnohistorical/ archaeological approach. B.A. Hans. thesis, Qld. Univ.

DRANE, W.G. 1918. Letter to Surveyor-General. Brisbane, 27 April 1918. Ref. 18/5244 LaS.D.

ELKIN, A.P. 1940. Cave paintings in the Carnarvon Ranges, South-east Queensland. Oceania XI:114-115.

FORD, F.B. CAMPBELL. 1918. Letter 7 June to Survey Office, Dept. of Public Lands , Queensland.

FRAUCA, HARRY AND Co FRAUCA. 1967. Emu in the sky. Walkabout 33(9):43-46.

GEARY, N. 19 39. Aboriginal drawings of the Carnarvon Range, Queensland. Australian Museum Magazine 7(1):11-12.

GODDARD, R.H. 1941. Aboriginal Rock sculpture and stencilling in the Carnarvon Ranges. Oceania XI:368-372.

HENDERSON, HARRYa 1963a Aboriginal art gallery. People 14(17):28-29.

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JENSEN, H.I. and R.T. DUNLOP. 1926. Geological reconnaissance between

Roma, Springsure, Tambo and Taroom ..• Queensland Geological Survey

Publication No. 277:113-129.

McCARTHY, F.D. 1960. Rock art ln Central Queensland. Mankind 5:400-404

McCARTHY, F.D. 1967. Australian Aboriginal Rock Art. Australian Museum,

Sydney. 3rd edition.

McKENZIE, ELIZABETH. 1977. Aboriginal sites at Isla Gorge. Queensland

Naturalist 21(5/6):104-5.

MacLELLAN, A.S. 1901. The Queenslander, 9 February.

MAITLAND, GIBB. 1894. Annual report to the Department of Mines, Queensland.

MAYNARD, LESLIE. 19740 The Archaeology of Australian Aboriginal Art. The

Art of Oceania Symposium, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario,

August 1974. Typescript.

MESTON, ARCHIBALD. 1901. Among the Myalls. Maranoa Aborigines. The

Queenslander, Jan. 12, 1901. Pp. 66-92.

MORWOOD, M.J. 1976. Three rock art sites in central Queensland. Occasional

Papers of the Anthropology Museum, Queensland University, 6:84-96

MULVANEY, DoJ. and E.B. JOYCEo 1965, Archaeological and Geomorphological

investigations on Mt. Moffat Station, Queensland, Australia. P.P.S.

31:147-212.

O'BRIEN, P.A. 1939/40. Carnarvon Range Expedition, 1937. Queensland

Geographical Journal 46:27-32.

PARROT, ToS. 1888. Cave paintings in Queensland. The Centenial

Magazine 1:271

QUINNELL, M.Co 1975. Aboriginal rock art in Carnarvon Gorge, south­

central Queensland. Anthrop. Soc. Qld. Newsl. 69:2-10

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QUINNELL, M.C. 1976. Aboriginal Rock Art in Carnarvon Gorge, South

Central Queensland. M.A. thesis, University of New England.

QUINNELL, M.C. 1977. Schematisation and naturalism in the rock art of

south central Queensland. In Form in Indigenous art, Ucko, P .J. ( ed. ) •

A.IoAoS., Canberra.

REDMOND, KoB. 1963. Unique Aboriginal stencils in Queensland.

Australian Natural History 14(8):272.

SUTTON, Bill. 1967. TI1e Blacks Palace. Sunday Mail Magazine,

2 April, p. 4.

TIBBETS, W.C. 1902. Aboriginal dialect. Science of Man 5(2):26-27.

WILKINS, HUbert. 1928. Undiscovered Australia Ernest Benn, London.

292po,illus.

WORSNOP, T. 1897. The prehistoric arts, manufactures, weapons etc

of the Aborigines of Australia. Govt. Printer, Adelaide.

60684- S. R. HAMPSON, Government Pnnter. Queensland

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