ABORIGINAL W0RKSH0P8 ox the C0A8T of NEW 

 SOUTH WALE8, and their CONTENTS. 



By R. ETHERiDrjE, Junr., Curator, and Thomas AX'niTELEruiE, 



Senior Zoologist. 



(Plates xlii.-xlv., and figs. 394.3). 



T. — Introduction. 



A preliminary account of this subject appeared in the Curator's 

 Report for 1900.' The report reads as follows: — "A very 

 remarkable discovery was made by Mr. T. Whitelegge in the 

 earh' part of the year, along the local sea-board. A series of 

 heavy gales displaced the sand hummocks at Bondi and Maioubra 

 Bays, iJee Why Lagoon, etc., exposing what appeared to be an old 

 land surface. On the latter Mr. Whitelegge found revealed, 

 what we had never before imagined to exist, a series of aboriginal 

 ' workshops ' where for generations the blacks of the Port Jack- 

 son District must have manufactured chips, splinters and points 

 foi' insertion along the distal margins of their spears and for 

 other purposes. The old land surface at Bondi, as I saw it, in 

 company with the discoverer, was covered with thousands of these 

 chips, some of them exquisitely made, with core pieces, chippers 

 and rubbers. The lithological character of the material used was 

 very varied, from pure white crystalline (juartz, (jpacpie amorphous 

 quartz, eveiy variety of chert and quartzite, to rocks of a meta- 

 morphic character. It is quite clear that the siliceous material 

 was derived in a great measure from the surrounding Hawkesbury 

 Sandstone, but the others were probably obtained from distant 

 sources. I regard this as one of tlie most important ethnological 

 discoveries made in New South Wales for many years." 



Mr. Walter Howchin- appears to have discovered a large number 

 of small weapons and implements of various kinds on the South 

 Australian sea-board, but there is no indication as to whether 

 these stone implements were found scattered over the surface 

 generally or deiived from " workshops." The instruments are 



1 Etheridge--Rec. Aiistr. Miis., ir., 4, ]90U, pp. 148 and 165. 

 '' Howc-liin — Prof. Aiistr. A.^soc. Adv. Sci., v., 1893, p. 522. 



