13 
TREES CARVED BY ABORIGINES. 
I have pleasure in presenting six photographs taken hy Mr. C. J. McMaster 
(Chairman of the Western Lands Board) near Dubbo. He has kindly furnished the 
following information concerning them :— 
Plates 2 and 3 represent the same tree from different aspects. 
Plates 4, 5, and 6 are of the butt and part of the trunk of another tree a few yards away from 
above, and a mound close by is said to be an aboriginal grave. 
The present owner takes great care of these trees, and he told me that the carvings were 
comparatively old fifty-two years ago. 
I also submit a marked tree, Bull Oak (Gasuarina Luehmanni), from 
Gilgandra, photographed by Mr. 11. H. Cambage. 
I asked Mr. It. Etheridge, Curator of the Australian Museum, a well-known 
authority on the subject, for a bibliography of these marked trees, which indicate 
aboriginal graves, and he referred me to a paper by himself in the “ Records of the 
Australian Museum,” ii, 51 (1893), with a plate (13). 
This paper gives an account of certain carved trees and burying-places in 
the Parish of Burragorang, County of Camden. The carved trees were a She-Oak 
and a Gum, and the paper is embellished with three illustrations of the carvings. 
The paper (p. 52) contains a valuable account of aboriginal carved trees, 
which I extract as follows, since it is very important to prominently draw attention 
to these matters before the trees are destroyed, and before those who can gi\e 
information concerning them have passed away. 
I am not acquainted with any systematic account of Australian carved trees ; in fact, little seems 
to have been collectively written about them, and very few representations figured. Probably some of the 
earliest illustrations are those by Oxley, Sturt, and “W.R.G.,” presumed to be, from the context of his 
writings, Mr. Surveyor W. R. Govett, of Govett’s Leap fame. Oxley discovered a grave on the Lachlan, 
consisting of a semicircular mound, with two trees overlooking it, barked and carved in a simple manner.* * * § 
These carvings consisted of herring-bone on the one tree, and well-marked curved although simple lines on 
the other. The explorer Sturt noticed an oblong grave beyond Taylor’s Rivulet, Macquarie River, around 
which the trees were “ fancifully carved on the inner side,” one with a figure of a heart.! Ihe anonymous 
author (W.R.G.) describes an occurrence of this kind at Mount Wayo, County Argyle, in tiie following 
words: “The trees all round the tomb were marked in various peculiar ways, some with zigzags and 
stripes, and pieces of bark otherwise cut.”f A Mr. Macdonald states that the aborigines of the Page and 
Isis, tributaries of the Hunter River, carve serpentine lines on two trees to the north-west of each gia\e.§ 
The figures arc either composed of right lines or curves, more commonly the former, but a few 
instances have been recorded of natural objects, such as the outline of an emu’s foot, seen by Leichhardt 
* Journ. Two Expeds. Interior N. S. Wales, 1820, p. 139, plate, 
t Two Expeds. Interiors. Austr., 1S34, I, p. 14. 
J Saturday Mag., 1836, ix, No. 279, p. 184. 
§ Journ. Anthrop. Inst. Gt. Brit, and Ireland, 1878, vii, p. 256. 
