Art. V. — Note on Aboriginal Rod- Painting in the 

 Victoria Range, County of Dundas, Victoria. 



(With Plate V.) 



By Rev. John Mathew, M.A., B.D. 



[Eead 4th June, 1896.] 



The Victoria Range, in the County of Dundas, Victoria, is 

 remarkable for the multitude of bold, bare crags which crown its 

 peaks and dot its sides. Some of them are gigantic in size and 

 fantastic in form. On the face of one of these huge masses the 

 sketches are to be seen which form the subject of this note. It 

 is situated in the Parish of Billiminah about five miles east of 

 Mr. Carter's Glenisla homestead, which is on the main road about 

 half-way between Horsham and Hamilton. 



On the north bank of the Billiminah Creek, at the point where 

 it emerges from the bosom of the ranges and some three hundred 

 yards from its bed, the rock stands, an impressive object, on the 

 southern slope of a western rib of the Victoria Range. It rises 

 abruptly to a height of upwards of sixty-five feet. The outline 

 of the base is an oblong; the angles at the south end are approxi- 

 mately right angles, and the north end is rounded. Half-way up 

 the rock on the northern side there is a large, natural cavern 

 extending into the cliff some ten feet, the interior being visible 

 from the ground. 



The southern face of the rock is about fifty feet in width and 

 projects over a plat of ground which has been cleared and levelled 

 partly by nature, partly by human agency. The angle at the 

 base is about sixty deg., but as the rock rises it declines more 

 from the perpendicular. As the horizontal line taken from the 

 middle of the base forward to the point whence a perpendicular 

 would reach the brow of the rock measures forty-nine feet, the 

 height of the brow from the ground must be at least sixty feet, 

 and is probably more. The face fronts a little to east of south. 

 widening and taking a slight turn to eastward near the summit. 



