Both Bob and myself were keen to look at an Aboriginal art cave in the Wilton area on the Southern Highlands.
The cave seems to lie on crown land, near a creek, but was not easy to reach. The first way we tried to walk there involved a lot of unexpected scrub, so we chose a slightly longer route that was was a lot more open. When we reached the cave, the art was truly amazing.
The cave has been relatively well known to non-aboriginals for a long time. It was archeologically described in the early 1960’s, and photos taken then, compared to now, seem to show little deterioration in the art. But the author of that report also mentions vandalism (graffiti) done in the 1930’s.
Most of the cave art is done in charcoal. There are a lot of kangaroos and human figures.
This large horizontal figure is impressive –
But some of the small motifs are very interesting. This appears to be two fighting warriors –
Now for some histogram stretching using my iDStratch phone app. It is better for ochre art rather than charcoal art.
Another part of the cave has three fish motifs –
And some very faint art –
Here is the creekbed outside the cave –
A more detailed look at some of the art –
We then investigated another nearby cave.
We found this art, which is probably not authentic aboriginal art –
Parts of this cave were full of graffiti –
But there were also some faint hand stencils revealed by using iDStretch –
There seems to be two hand stencils in the above photo.
The photo above seems to have an arm stencil. A lower nook (photo below) seems to have at least three hand stencils.
We then headed back to Bob’s car.
After lunch at Hilltop, we visited Cave Creek at the Bargo River State Conservation Area.
This area has recently reopened after some track work has been completed. The new track is very good.
Its a short walk down to the start of the cave, which is really a tunnel in the creekbed.
To visit the tunnel you need a torch.
We stopped when we reached this deep looking pool just above the final waterfall.
We then headed back upstream.
We now headed down the track to the far end of the tunnel.
Here were are looking up the final waterfall.
After returning to Bob’s car, we then drove to Picton, and visited a historic railway viaduct.
This is the Stonequarry Creek Viaduct. It was built in the 1860’s and is very similar, although slightly smaller, than the Knapsack Gully Viaduct at the Lapstone Zigzag. This is not surprising since they were both designed by John Whitton, railway engineer.
