Location | near the towns of Tarragal and Cape Bridgewater, Victoria |
---|---|
Region | Australia |
Coordinates | 38°19′7.1″S141°24′28″E / 38.318639°S 141.40778°E |
Site notes | |
Excavation dates | 1970s |
Archaeologists | Harry Lourandos |
The Tarragal Caves are a network of large limestone caves and rockshelters which overlook the Bridgewater Lakes near the towns of Tarragal and Cape Bridgewater, Victoria in the Charles La Trobe and are near Discovery Bay Coastal Park. The caves were identified as important Aboriginal camping places early in the historic period, and were excavated in the late 1970s by Harry Lourandos, [1] revealing stratified deposits in the floor of 11,300 years old, along with shell midden deposits and earth ovens over 11,000 years old. [2]
Located just off the Bridgewater Lakes Road, and accessible in part by walking track, the cave openings form a series of galleries with clear views across the surrounding landscape and lakes. [3]
One of the caves extends under ground for over 400 m (1,300 ft)[ dubious ] and has a sinkhole opening to the surface so that there is a constant stream of air through the cave and rising up the hole. It is said that whenever Aboriginals approached this, they would[ clarification needed ] a piece of wood into the hole to "propitiate the demon supposed to reside within its profound and mysterious depths." [4]
Colonial administrator Charles La Trobe visited the site in 1845 and 1846, and had some of his men lower a rope ladder over the cliff so he could explore the caves. He also provided a detailed description in 1846, noting that "...the ‘natives’ referred to it as ‘Lubras’ Cave’" and that they "...knew the caverns well and ...had a superstitious dread of them, stating that the caverns below were inhabited by headless lubras". LaTrobe noted that when they came to the point under the sink hole there was a large pile of timber, assumed to be the items thrown down by Aboriginals over the ages. They then set fire to the pile lighting up the cave "... and displayed a magnificent vaulted chamber, bedecked with long glistening stalactites, and tenanted by vast numbers of bats, whose whirring, whizzing noise was probably that which the natives attributed to some supernatural being." [5]
An early etching depicting an Aboriginal family in the cave entrance was probably inspired by La Trobe's record. [6]
Pollen analysis of sediments in the cave has assisted in reconstructing the Pleistocene climate and environment of the region and understanding what resources were available to Aborigines. [7]
Charles Joseph La TrobeCB, commonly Latrobe, was appointed in 1839 superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales and, after the establishment in 1851 of the colony of Victoria, he became its first lieutenant-governor.
Brimble Pit and Cross Swallet Basins is a 154.3 hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest between Wookey Hole and Priddy in the Mendip Hills, Somerset, notified in 1987.
Henry Edmund Pulteney Dana (1820–1852) established the Native Police Corps in the Port Phillip District in 1842, he was responsible for two massacres of Aboriginal people one at Barmah Lake in 1843 and the other at Snowy River in 1846. Dana was born in England, his father being Captain William Pulteney Dana of the 6th Regiment. Henry Dana migrated to Van Diemen's Land in 1840, but in 1842 he relocated to the Port Phillip District where he renewed acquaintance with Superintendent Charles La Trobe, whom he knew in London. The two men became firm friends and Latrobe appointed Dana to establish a native police corps.
William Thomas represented Aboriginal people in various roles in the Port Phillip district in Australia.
Caramut is a town in the Western District of Victoria, Australia on the Hamilton Highway. It is in the Shire of Moyne local government area and the federal Division of Wannon.
The Jardwadjali (Yartwatjali), also known as the Jaadwa, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Victoria, whose traditional lands occupy the lands in the upper Wimmera River watershed east to Gariwerd (Grampians) and west to Lake Bringalbert.
Murdering Gully, formerly known as Puuroyup to the Djargurd Wurrung people, is the site of an 1839 massacre of 35–40 people of the Tarnbeere Gundidj clan of the Djargurd Wurrung in the Camperdown district of Victoria, Australia. It is a gully on Mount Emu Creek, where a small stream adjoins from Merida Station.
The Gadubanud (Katubanut), also known as the Pallidurgbarran, Yarro waetch or Cape Otway tribe (Tindale), are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Victoria. Their territory encompasses the rainforest plateau and rugged coastline of Cape Otway. Their numbers declined rapidly following the onset of European colonisation, and little is known of them. However, some may have found refuge at the Wesleyan mission station at Birregurra, and later the Framlingham mission station, and some people still trace their descent from them.
Aboriginal Victorians, the Aboriginal Australians of Victoria, Australia, occupied the land for tens of thousands of years prior to European settlement. Aboriginal people have lived a semi-nomadic existence of fishing, hunting and gathering and associated activities for at least 40,000 years.
The Keilor archaeological site was among the first places to demonstrate the antiquity of Aboriginal occupation of Australia when a cranium, unearthed in 1940, was found to be nearly 15,000 years old. Subsequent investigations of Pleistocene alluvial terraces revealed hearths about 31,000 years BP, making Keilor one of the earliest sites of human habitation in Australia. Remains of megafauna suggest a possible association with Aboriginal hunting.
Aboriginal sites of Victoria form an important record of human occupation for probably more than 40,000 years. They may be identified from archaeological remains, historical and ethnographic information or continuing oral traditions and encompass places where rituals and ceremonies were performed, occupation sites where people ate, slept and carried out their day to day chores, and ephemeral evidence of people passing through the landscape, such as a discarded axe head or isolated artefact.
The Mudgegonga rock shelter is a large rock overhang which contains over 400 Aboriginal wall paintings and stencils and evidence of prehistoric Aboriginal occupation. The site is located in north eastern Victoria near the town of Mudgegonga, and is associated with rich artefact deposits that shows occupation of the region by 3,500 years ago and may have been used several thousand years before this. It has been described as one of the richest rock art sites in Victoria.
New Guinea II is a limestone cave and rockshelter on the Snowy River at the end of New Guinea Track, near Buchan, Victoria. The cave was within the country of the Krowathunkooloong clan of the Gunaikurnai nation. The deep cave system has an overhanging cliff that creates a rock shelter at the entrance facing the river. Excavations in the 1980s carried out by archaeologist Paul Ossa and a team from La Trobe University found stone artefacts, and other signs of occupation that were dated to almost 20,000 BP.
Mount Franklin is an extinct volcano about 10 km north of Daylesford and 4.6 km south east of Franklinford in Victoria, Australia. A road spirals round the outside slopes covered with pine trees, into a flat 50 acre caldera, and onto the rim which hosts a fire lookout, parking area and picnic ground.
Harry Lourandos is an Australian archaeologist, adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and Sociology, School of Arts and Social Sciences at James Cook University, Cairns. He is a leading proponent of the theory that a period of hunter-gatherer intensification occurred between 3000 and 1000 BCE.
Carl Walter, also known as Charles Walter, was an Australian botanist and photographer. He was born in Mecklenburg, Germany in about 1831 and arrived in Victoria in the 1850s.
Kutikina Cave is a rock shelter located on the Franklin River in the South West Wilderness, a World Heritage Area in the Australian state of Tasmania.
The Eumeralla Wars were the violent encounters over the possession of land between British colonists and Gunditjmara Aboriginal people in what is now called the Western District area of south west Victoria.
Charles Wightman Sievwright was a British army officer before being appointed Assistant Protector of Aborigines in part of the Port Phillip District of the colony of New South Wales, now Victoria, Australia.
The Gurdies is a village located in Bass Coast Shire in Victoria, Australia.