This Day Tonight: Sydney's Aboriginal rock carvings in danger, 1969

REPORTER:

The great white rock of Wheeler Creek, set in the scrubby hills overlooking Sydney's northern beach belt. Chipped into this soft sandstone — some of the only clues we have of the life, art and religion of the Aborigines who lived around Sydney before the settlers wiped them out. Hundreds or thousands of years old, these carvings — nobody knows. Aborigines have lived here for at least 35,000 years. Skilfully animated outlines of kangaroos and weapons, or battles between men, of the mysterious gods of the Dreamtime, and all slowly fading away from the assaults of wind, rain and white men. Part of this rock is government land and part belongs to a pig farmer, and someone has driven fence stakes right through the middle. Some of the sites are less remote than Wheeler Creek and more vulnerable. Early settlers killed off the Aboriginals, and now the land developers are busy covering up their sole remaining legacy. Kevin Thompson is a schoolteacher. He bought this land at Beacon Hill five years ago.

KEVIN THOMPSON:

We were just looking for a block of land and just saw them here and that's all there was to it.

REPORTER:

Did the builders say, 'Take care to avoid damaging them?' They obviously have been damaged at some time.

KEVIN THOMPSON:

Well, actually no. As a matter of fact, when we came in, half the place was splattered with cement everywhere.

REPORTER:

Another important carving site on Sydney's northern outskirts. It lies on council land next to a highway, slowly weathering away with no explanatory signs for the infrequent visitors. David Moore is the Australian Museum's Curator of Anthropology, and I asked him the significance of the carvings.

DAVID MOORE:

We really know practically nothing about them because the early settlers took no interest at all. They never asked the Aborigines about them. No-one ever saw an Aborigine actually making one of these rock engravings. These, I think, undoubtedly are sacred grounds, particularly the ones with human figures on, and I think they represent the myths. The young men who were being initiated would have been brought along here. The myths were explained to them and it was pointed out to them on the ground. The Aborigines, I think, would have actually believed that this is where the heroes from the Dreamtime disappeared into the rock, and the engravings are the shapes that they left behind them.

REPORTER:

What's the basic problem? Is it that nobody has really had sole responsibility for the sites?

DAVID MOORE:

Well, in the main, it's really been looked upon as the responsibility of local councils and shire councils in the past.

REPORTER:

And what sort of a job have they done on the whole?

DAVID MOORE:

They haven't done much, on the whole, because they haven't had funds available. Local interest has not been strong enough to push them into doing something.

REPORTER:

Now, the septic tank, I see, seems to interrupt the flow of the carvings. Wouldn't it have been possible to put that somewhere else, or were you forced to?

KEVIN THOMPSON:

Well, we were forced to, yes. I wanted the septic tanks down in the groove further on, but the…

REPORTER:

To avoid the paintings?

KEVIN THOMPSON:

The paintings, yes. But the council engineer apparently decided that we must have a driveway, so that was all there was to it, so the septic tanks had to go in there.

REPORTER:

Are there any other carvings around about here?

KEVIN THOMPSON:

Yes, there are lots of carvings around here. There's one underneath that house over there, as a matter of fact, and there are lots of smaller ones…

REPORTER:

UNDERNEATH the house?

KEVIN THOMPSON:

Underneath the house, yes. Built right on top of it.