Aboriginal Rock Art
Aborigines left signs of their culture all over Australia. In places where they gathered to perform ceremonies or to meet other tribes, they created beautiful rock art sites. Some of them are thousand of years old.
Places featuring Aboriginal rock art are mostly sacred to the Aborigines, often of cultural importance to them, and almost never open to public. Also those sites are deeply hidden in the australian Bush and not easy to find, except you know the land like the Aboriginal people to whom it belongs to.
But there are places in Australia where Aboriginal people allow tourists to visit those sites. There are some place where you can see rock engravings and you do not have to travel deep into the bush.
When you visiting Sydney you have at least two possibilities to see good preserved rock engravings. A good set of Aboriginal engravings can be found in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park right at the northern border of Sydney. Another site close to Sydney is the Bulgandry Aboriginal rock art site (Brisbane Water National Park).
Please, read which simple actions you can take helping to protect Aboriginal rock art sites.
The creation of Aboriginal rock art
Rock engravings (also called Petroglyphs) are believed to be created by first drawing the outline of the figure and afterwards using a hard pointed stone to peak a series of holes along the outlined figure. In the end the rock between the holes is removed.
Sometimes those engravings mark important points. In the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, I've found an engraving of the aboriginal symbol that means “waterhole” close to a small creck which obviously marks the creck.
How to take the best pictures
Taking pictures of engravings is often disappointing, because the grooves of the engravings can hardly be distinguish from the surrounding rock in bright sun. The best conditions to take pictures is in the morning or late afternoon when the sun is low and throws shadows in the grooves. Also, after rain the engravings can been seen easier, because the rays of the sun reflect differently at the wet grooves.