Ellis Trig oval engraving

Source term: oval bullroarer

No local term recorded; "oval bullroarer" is the current site record's descriptive phrase for the motif, citing McCarthy's 1983 catalogue.

On a weathered sandstone platform at Ellis Trig North, above Cottage Point in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, a small pecked oval sits beside a cluster of curved implement engravings and a marine animal pierced by a spear. W. D. Campbell surveyed and drew the whole group in 1899 for the New South Wales Geological Survey, though his plate gives the oval no caption of its own. Later cataloguing by Frederick McCarthy is cited as reading that shape as an unusual motif on this panel: an oval bullroarer, set apart from the three boomerang-like forms beside it. The engravings are all very weathered and difficult to see.

The site also has an engraving of a seal that's been pierced by a spear, and next to the boomerangs is an oval bullroarer (an unusual motif).

Current illustrated site record, hikingtheworld.blog/engravings/ellis-trig-north-cottage-point/

Particulars

Object

A small pecked oval, or teardrop-shaped, engraved motif on a weathered sandstone platform, sitting immediately beside a group of three nested curved sword-club/non-returning-boomerang figures. The same panel carries a pierced marine animal (a seal, speared) and other curved implement forms. Campbell's 1899 plan draws the oval plainly but gives it no functional caption of its own; the current site record reads it as an oval bullroarer, an unusual motif on this panel.

Function

Not recorded.