ROCK CARVING BY THE AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. 



By R. H. MATHEWS, Licensed Surveyor. 



[Read before the Royal Society of Queensland, September 12, 1896.1 



In a paper contributed to the Royal Society of Victoria in 

 1894,* I stated that I had obtained authentic information 

 respecting the age of aboriginal paintings drawn in caves in the 

 WoUombi district, New South Wales, about the year 1843, 

 which settled the question of rock painting having been practised 

 by the blacks for many years alter the settlement of the colony 

 by Europeans. Mr. R. L. -Jack, the Government Geologist of 

 Queensland, in describing some aboriginal paintings which he 

 found in caves on the Palmer goldfield in that colony, states as 

 his opinion that the drawings seen by him were probably not 

 more than twenty-five years old.f 



In the paper referred to I also described some aboriginal 

 rock carvings, but up to that time I had not succeeded in finding 

 anyone who had seen these carvings in course of production. 

 Since then I have been more fortunate. Whilst recently on an 

 expedition amongst the Darkinung tribe on the Hawkesbury 

 River for the purpose of studying their customs, I met a native 

 named " Andy," who showed me a carving on a rock which he 

 had seen done by a blackfellow when he himself was a lad of 

 about fifteen years old. Some of the white people who had 

 known Andy from his boyhood told me that he was then (1896) 

 about fifty-five years of age, so that it would be about forty years 

 since the execution of the drawing, which would make the date 

 about 1855. 



My informant stated that the blackfellow who carved the 

 figure was known as " Hiram " by the white people amongst 

 whom he occasionally worked. He was a middle-aged man at- 

 the time the drawing was done, and has been dead for a number 



- Proc. Roy. Soc. Victoria, VII. N.S., pp. 143-156, Plates VIII and IX. 

 t Proc. Roy. Soc. Queensland XI., pp. 91-98, Plate I. 

 G 



