THE PROBLEM OF ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AUSTRALIA 43 
the latter came from an excavation at the head of a gully near 
Mount Tinnigar, Devil’s River. 
At Hasemer’s brick pit, Forbes, New South Wales, Andrews 
(1901) recorded middens and bones of Diprotodon in alluvium at 
a depth of 18 ft. from the surface. There is no available evidence 
as to whether alluvium is now accumulating at this site. Andrews 
has informed me that he saw the pit only after complete removal 
of these objects, but that he considers that Hasemer’s statement 
concerning them was an honest one; he cannot, however, vouch 
for the association of the midden with the bones. 
A stone tomahawk was unearthed at a depth of 2 ft. in 1870 by 
miners digging a water-race in shingly alluvium at the side of 
the valley of the Upper Dargo River, Victoria (Howitt, 1898). 
Howitt, who visited the locality soon afterwards, did not consider 
that there is evidence of geological antiquity. 
Wilkinson (1887) recorded a stone axe found at 14 ft. below the 
surface at Bodalla, near the coast of New South Wales, about 80 
miles north of the boundary of Victoria. 
At West Maitland, New South Wales, a primitive stone axe 
with a ground edge was found in ferruginous clay at 11 ft. below 
the surface during the sinking of a mine shaft (Enright, 1923). 
Immediately below the surface is a bed of reddish clay 8 ft. thick 
and below this is ferruginous clay 7 ft. 6 in. thick in which the 
specimen was found. Surface topography suggests that the clay 
beds were not recently deposited. 
Near Cape Otway, Victoria, artefacts were recorded in a mixture 
of beach material, pebbles, humus and broken shells resting on 
Permo-Carboniferous sandstone and apparently intermediate 
between it and dunes 200 ft. high (Etheridge, 1876). David and 
Etheridge (1890) considered that the deposit, since it underlies 
a dune of this size, must be ancient, but Gregory (1904) held that 
the implements were buried by the advancing dune, or that the 
shelly material was a surface layer resting on the dune and extend- 
ing beyond its edge. 
Certain rock carvings in the Flinders Range, South Australia, 
are patinated, and Basedow (1914) claimed that they are ancient. 
The evidence has been discussed by Mountford (1929 a), who 
thought that some of the carvings are of considerable age, and 
by Ward and others (1933), who do not believe that any claim to 
antiquity can be substantiated. 
Mountford (1926b) described a rock-carving from Panara- 
mitte, South Australia, which he believes depicts the head of a 
crocodile, a reptile long extinct in South Australia and now repre- 
sented there only by fossils. 
