NEW SOUTH WALES. 273 



they had all been killed off' by some unusual influx of fresh 

 water many years before. 



But beyond all that has been described, and beyond the ex- 

 treme beauty of its wild and rocky scenery, the Browera Creek has 

 yet another interest ; it was in old times the haunt of numerous 

 Aborigines, wdio lived on its banks in order to eat the oysters 

 and mussels, and the fish. 



On every point or projection, formed where a side branch is 

 given off by the main creek, is to be seen a vast kitchen midden 

 or shell mound. So numerous are these heaps of refuse, and so 

 extensive, that it has been a regular trade, at which White men 

 have worked all their lives, to turn over these heaps and sift out 

 the undecomposed shells, for making lime by burning them ; 

 unfortunately the numerous weapons thus found in the heaps, 

 have mostly been thrown away. 



There is now not a single Black on the creek. Many of the 

 mounds are very ancient, and it must have taken a very long 

 time for such heaps to accumulate. Stone hatchet blades are 

 still to be picked up in considerable numbers, and I obtained 

 several. The heaps are very like those at the Cape of Good 

 Hope in appearance, but there were none of the peculiar piles of 

 stones about them, which I noticed at the latter locality. 



The softer layers weathering out from under the harder slabs 

 of the horizontally bedded sandstones, form numerous shelters 

 and low-roofed caves, along the creek banks. It was in these 

 caves or " gunyas," that the blacks used to camp, and in front, 

 of all of them, a mass of shells slopes down towards the creek 

 just as the Cape of Good Hope. 



I dug into one of the heaps ; places were found where fires 

 had been made, and there were numerous bits of burnt stick and 

 charcoal, a piece of Wallaby bone charred by the fire, and the 

 thigh bone of a Black woman. This latter was found without 

 any of the remaining bones of the skeleton, the woman having 

 been perhaps eaten piecemeal. These relics w T ere buried in a mass 

 of cockle, oyster and mussel shells, mingled with much black 

 powdery matter composed of decayed shells, and other debris. 



The walls and roofs of the caves are covered all over with 

 drawings executed by the blacks in charcoal on the rock. These 



T 



