Many Aboriginal rock engraving sites can be found along the coast of Sydney, several of which are across the cliff edges of Bondi. Rock engravings were a common way to capture bodies of cultural knowledge and sometimes referred today as “our classrooms”. Not only were engravings used as a way of teaching, they were utilised as indicators, showing the sources of food within that local area. Coastal Sydney people such as Cora Gooseberry and Johnny Baswick’s son Freddy continued to hold knowledge of engravings in the 19th century and these places are still very important to Aboriginal people today.

The sandstone along Sydney’s coast is a relatively soft stone to work with and to make an engraving the figure is first ‘pecked’ (or drilled) as a series of holes forming the outline of the figure and then conjoined, similar to a joining of the dots. Traditional tools are used to create these rock engravings.

There are two large groups of engraving on the flat rocks within North Bondi Golf Course. The southern group is not currently uncovered and includes a whale, porpoise, many large and small fish, human figures, two boomerangs, footprints and more. You can see the northern group which includes a seal, shark, large and small fish, and a boomerang.

Over time the markings have eroded due to the softness of the rock, the natural influences of weathering and people treading on these sacred sites. To try to protect the engravings, Council put a fence around the northern group in 1933 and then ‘restored’ the fading engravings by getting a stone mason recut and deepen the grooves in 1951 and 1964. Sadly, through this process some of the images were not traced exactly to the original imagery and were not done using a traditional method.

When you go to an engraving site it’s important to remember that these sites are culturally significant to the Aboriginal people of the local area, so you should never walk on or touch any of the engravings.

Courtesy the Gujaga Foundation.