156 A4 PAGES LIMP COVER
MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS INCLUDING 72 PHOTOS
REGIONAL HISTORY: THE HISTORY OF BURRILL LAKE SOUTH OF ULLADULLA,
ITS INDUSTRIES AND TOURISM,
ACCOUNTS OF MIDDENS, THE PIGEON HOUSE ABORIGINAL TRIBE
AND CUSTOMS FROM THE 1840s.
by Alex McAndrew
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156 A4 PAGES LIMP COVER MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS INCLUDING 72 PHOTOS
REGIONAL HISTORY: THE HISTORY OF BURRILL LAKE SOUTH OF ULLADULLA, ITS INDUSTRIES AND TOURISM, ACCOUNTS OF MIDDENS, THE PIGEON HOUSE ABORIGINAL TRIBE AND CUSTOMS FROM THE 1840s. |
PHOTO PAGE 7: ABORIGINAL ROCK-SHELTER PHOTO COURTESY OF KEVIN SMITH, BURRILL LAKE
THE BIGGEST MIDDENS FIND IN AUSTRALIA
In January 1930 two people named J.S. Rolfe and F.D. McCarthy unearthed several Aboriginal artefacts from a rock-shelter in Lake Burrill and presented them to the Australian Museum. In June 1930 more implements were found there by a Mr Carlyle Greenwell. Towards the end of that year it was decided to organise a team to investigate and excavate the site which was in a small valley terminating on Ireland's Bay on the southern shore of the Lake (Section 81, Parish of Woodburn). Anthropologists, assisted by local people including George Turnbull, whose forbears had lived at the western end of the Lake, and who founded the Folk Museum in Milton, took out three tons of middens and debris from the rock-shelter. At that time this recess in sandstone was the largest of its kind known. In the December 1931 issue of Mankind, the official organ of the Anthropological Society of Australia, W.W. Thorpe described the shelter as having a length of 139 feet. Its height varies from thirteen feet four and a half inches to eight feet eleven and a half inches, graduating down to two feet at the rear. Its greatest depth from the outer margin to where the back wall meets the ground is forty-four feet. The outlook commands a view of the lake, and faces the north-east, so the trend of the cave is south-east to north-west. The floor of this extensive area is practically one large midden, consisting chiefly of wood ash, broken shells mixed with sand from the ceiling and walls, and alluvial earth washed in from the outside. In the centre, the occupational debris was eighteen inches deep; at the north-west end it reached a maximum of three feet two inches. We were informed by the present owner of the land (Mr James Jonas) that he had removed a quantity of the midden debris for his garden and orchard, so probably the original depth all over was in the region of three feet.
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