Mysterious Australia Newsletter - November 2011

Mysterious Australia Newsletter November, 2011
Mysterious Australia
Vol 1. Issue No 11
NOVEMBER 2011
INSIDE:
CELTS
IN
S Y D N E Y S W E S T 3,000 Y E A R S A G O .
THE LAND THAT WAITED. YOWIES AND THYLACINES ALIVE
Blue Mountains UFO Research Club. The Club meetings are held on the third Saturday of the month, at the Gilroy residence, 12 Kamillaroi Road, South Katoomba, from 1pm onwards. We are situated on the corner of Kamillaroi Road and Ficus Street, and as we always say, park in Ficus Street where there is safer parking.
Rex and Heather Gilroy, Australias top UFO and Unexplained Mysteries Research team. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
CELTS IN SYDNEYS WEST 3,000 YEARS AGO.

by Rex Gilroy
Copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
New finds by Nigel Kerr confirm the Gilroys theory that Ancient Celts, accompanied by Phoenicians, settled a wide area of Sydneys outer west 3,000 or more years ago. Nigel, who has been conducting his own research into ancient civilisation contacts within Australia, has found evidence of Celto-Phoenician colonisation in the Parramatta River region similar to that already uncovered by Greg Foster and I in the last few years. In the light of the recent Glenbrook area finds by Greg and I, Nigels discoveries are helping to form a wider picture of Bronze-Age colonisation of the Sydney district by Celts and Phoenicians throughout the period 2000-1400 BC. At a dense bushland location Nigel recently uncovered a series of lengthy ancient stone slab walls, one of which forms an enclosure for an altar stone bearing a Celtic inscription on its east side. On Thursday 13th October 2011 Heather and I visited Nigel and his wife Jody, after which he took me to see these relics. Upon seeing these walls I was struck by their identical features to those found by Heather and I in New Zealands North Island, at Bronze-Age Celtic settlement sites, and also another wall at a Hawkesbury River site in the vicinity of a huge cliffside face image of the Sun-God, Bel. When Nigel showed me the altar, in the form of a flat ironstone slab rising to form a 56cm tall bulge at one end, I found unmistakable Celtic glyphs on the east face. When translated later I found them to read: Observe her movements Inana* Queen of Heaven and Earth, Goddess of the Morning and Evening Star., beloved of Bel. [*Venus]. Two more glyphs on the west side of the bulge repeated the name Inana, Inana. Nigels discovery is a first for the Sydney region apart from my own finds of single references to Inana - at one North Queensland site and another on the Blue Mountains, otherwise rock inscription mention of this Celtic Goddess in Australia is at present rare. The altar was measured at 2 metres long by 1.4 metres wide and 40cm deep, the bulge being 55cm tall by 44cm wide. At another nearby location Nigel showed me a single large glyph in a squarish rock slab, which I later found to be another glyph spelling Inana. It would appear that Nigel had discovered a major Venus worship temple site. For this and other remains shown us on our previous visit, to have been established there, it is obvious that the remains of a settlement of considerable size awaits discovery. Even allowing for modern housing development hereabouts some traces will have to have survived. Remains of Celto-Phoenician settlement exist on the Hawkesbury-Nepean Rivers even onto the lower Blue Mountains. These people also penetrated the Georges River south of Sydney to establish a large farming community in the Campbelltown region as earlier discoveries of the Gilroys and Greg Foster have shown.
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The find by Nigel Kerr on the Parramatta River are exciting to say the least, and we wonder what other surprises he is certain to come up with from his searches. -0-
A lone altar stone in dense scrub. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011. Nigel Kerr entering the ruins of a small megalithic temple. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
Nigel examining the ancient Celtic stone wall he discovered. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
Nigel with his other prize discovery, the altar stone bearing the Inana inscription. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
The inscription reads: Observe her movements, Inana Queen of Heaven and Earth, Goddess of the Morning and Evening StarBeloved of Bel. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
The opposite side of the altar contains Inana engraved twice. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
A stone wall encloses the Inana altar. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
The Bronze-Age Celtic walls date back at least 3,000 or more years. Here trees have grown up through the stonework, the dead trunk is that of a gum tree hundreds of years old. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
Outline of the top of an ancient stone stairway leading down creek. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
A section of reasonably preserved wall, half-buried by leaf litter and bracken. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
Nigel with a stone slab found by him recently bearing the Celtic glyph spelling Iana. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
The glyph. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011. Rex examining Nigels Inana glyph. This particular symbol is rare in Australia. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
THE LAND THAT WAITED.

by Rex Gilroy.
Copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
[This article is taken from our book Mysterious Australia [URU Publications 2004].
I often feel sorry for our teachers of history. They have to confine themselves to that same old worn-out story of how Captain James Cook, RN, discovered the Australian east coast in 1770, although the Dutch had visited our northern and west coasts at least 164 years before his arrival. But what of the Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and others who were sailing Australian waters long before then? The truth is that we still know next to nothing about our early history of discovery and exploration and about the actual first discoverers of our shores. It is a saga of truly mammoth proportions far beyond the scope of this book, but the following chapters will give some idea of the mass of historical material awaiting anyone willing to shed themselves of those indoctrinated teachings now grossly out of date. The Land that Waited - the Land of Gold, the "Land of the Gods", endowed in all manner of riches, of gold, silver, copper, and other ores so highly prized by the ancient civilisations of Asia, the Near and Middle East-had always, it seems, been known to someone. No doubt seafarers from South East Asia were first to find our shores, and word passed to the Chinese, Phoenicians and other traders from India to the Red Sea coast. The tradition was already of considerable antiquity by the time Greek and Roman geographers wrote of the mysterious great southern continent situated far beyond the known world across the Indian Ocean. Ancient chronicles recorded Chinese voyages to Australia as early as 525 BC. Doubtless, there were far earlier voyages here in search of minerals and other valuables, but these records do not survive. However, their maps do, and these will be dealt with anon. Preserved in Iran are ancient maps, carved upon large stone tablets-the work of Persian cartographers around 500 BC. One of these is a map of the world, describing Asia as a large landmass encompassing Europe and Africa. Separated from Asia by a mighty ocean is another vast continental mass, obviously the Americas. Situated below these land masses is another great continent: the land of
"Dilmun" which we now know as Australia. An ancient Sumerian clay tablet from Ur records that Prince Naram-Sin sailed to this land about 2000 BC. To the Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom during the 12th Dynasty, around 2000 to 1788 BC, "Punt", the land from which their trading vessels obtained frankincense, myrrh and other valuables, was situated near present-day Somalia. Much later, the name Punt became confused, a slang term for any generally unknown land in the southern hemisphere, and eventually linked with the mysterious southern continent situated far out in the Indian Ocean-Australia. Maritime and geographical knowledge was far more advanced in the ancient world than most people today realise. For example, in 150 BC, Crates of Malos in Asia Minor constructed an enormous [3.3 metres in diameter] world globe. Crates taught that the Earth was a sphere and needed balancing land-masses to keep it in equilibrium. He thus envisaged four continents divided by two great oceans, one with a north-south axis, the other with an east-west axis, intersecting west of the Mediterranean. Asia/Europe/Africa he described as a single continent, "Oecumene". Separated by his east-west ocean he described "Perioeci", known as North America. Below this, in the vicinity of Panama and to the south of it he placed "Antipodes", now known as South America. Far below these land masses, in the region now occupied by Australia, he placed "Antoeci". Flavius Philstratus of Athens (175-249 AD) wrote that If the land be considered in relation to the entire mass of water, we can show that the earth is the lesser of the two. Unless the ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and others had not crossed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, how else could Philostratus have known that the oceans cover the greater part of the Earth's surface? There is a map, drawn by the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela in 40 AD, which describes the southern continent of "Antipodes". A manuscript fragment of this time tells of a Roman centurion, Marcellus, who sailed with a number of galleys from the Red Sea on an expedition to seek out new trade-links in the lands beyond Malaya. The expedition vanished for three years. He returned with only one ship. Marcellus told of having found a barren land inhabited by black natives who used a weapon which, if it missed its target, returned to the thrower, and of a spear that could be thrown further than their own, obviously with the aid of the Aboriginal woomera. He also described an animal as big as a man. It balanced itself on its back legs and tail and moved by jumping. Obviously he and his crewmen had seen a kangaroo. Lucian of Samosata (120-180 AD) wrote of a distant land where the savage inhabitants carried their young in pouches. The two regions where marsupials are found are Australia and its neighbouring islands, and South America. The first marsupial known in Europe was brought there in 1500 AD by the Spaniard, Vincente Yanez Pinzon. It was Pinzon's story of the monstrous beast and of trees "so large that it took six men with outstretched arms to span one" that led early Australian historians to the conclusion that Pinzon and Amerigo Vespucci (who accompanied him) had visited the south-western corner of Australia near the Leeuwin River. Their monstrous beast was a kangaroo, and the trees the big Jarrah or Karri gums of this region. However, Lucian lived at Samosata on the Euphrates River which leads into the Persian Gulf from which vessels sailed for India and beyond even centuries before Lucian's time. It seems likely that some story of marsupials may have reached, second or third hand, the Gulf ports in the days of Lucian. Arabs, Malays, Javanese and Chinese were aware of Australia's existence long before European arrival. The Arab claims in particular deserve attention. Preserved in Cairo are two 800-year-old Arab maps, one describing what appears to be our west coast, the other a crude outline of the entire continent-but with the mistake of some later European charts, for the island of Tasmania is joined to the mainland. Below this is depicted Antarctica. The Arab writer, Schems-ed-din-Mohammed, Caliph of Damascus (1256-1327 AD) wrote of an inhabited land beyond Madagascar across the Indian Ocean where Australia is situated. One Arab writer spoke of an animal with a pouch that inhabited this land, but confused it with a rhinoceros. Did he have a second- or third- hand account of a wombat?
The Arab geographer, Abulfeda (1273-1331 AD), wrote of an Arab expedition having circumnavigated the Earth some time around 1300 AD-an event that anticipated Magellan's feat by two centuries! He wrote that if two persons set out from the same point and travelled in exactly opposite directions, they would come back to this point but their calendars would differ by two days. The Arabs established trade routes on land and sea. Arab sailors made the journey round the Indian Ocean many times and learnt the pattern of tides and currents and the seasonal pattern of the monsoons. This knowledge contributed much to the Arabs' skill in navigation. Yet while these developments were taking place, Europe had already sunk into the Dark Ages, the knowledge of the ancients had been suppressed, and a flat Earth was now Church dogma. Map-making degenerated. One example is the 1280 AD Mappa Mundi of Richard de Haldingham of Lincoln, in which the world is conceived as a flat disc surrounded by ocean, its central waterway the Mediterranean and its precise centre at Jerusalem. To the north is a compressed British Isles, while the southern regions include a distorted Africa, Near East, mainland Asia and Indonesia. Australia and America are unknown! Only with the dawn of the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries did the quest for knowledge again return. Then the minds of men turned from missions to Jerusalem to voyages in search of the Spice Islands. Portugal and Spain led the way. Discoveries of relics and wrecks around the rugged Australian coastline speak of unknown contacts with our shores by mariners from Portugal and Spain a century and more before the arrival of the first Dutchman. For example, during the 1920s, bushwalkers on Stephens Island, 68 kilometres south of Cairns, far north Queensland, and five kilometres offshore, made a startling discovery in the jungle. In the dense undergrowth they found a stone Peruvian idol, decorated in old Castillian jewellery. About this same period on Prince of Wales Island, close to Thursday Island and 60 km west of Cape York, Queensland, a man investigating a cave found a huge rusty broadsword bearing finely engraved Castillian designs. Nearby, to his dismay he found a crumbling human skeleton together with a gold goblet. Many years ago, Aborigines on Murray Island, 165km north-west of Cape York, were found to possess light-coloured skins with definite Latin features, and Spanish words were used in everyday language. Meanwhile, at Ingham, 83 km up the coast from Townsville, a farmer ploughed up three-and-a-half swords, all of Spanish origin and one with a highly embossed hilt. Also, near Proserpine, 225 km down the coast from Townsville, another Spanish sword has been recovered. The evidence for pre-Dutch Spanish and earlier Portuguese landfalls on Australian shores consists largely of intriguing archaeological finds as well as surviving ancient maps and written records, but it is due to the scarcity of accurate documentation that conservative historians have been unprepared for so long to commit themselves on the issue. To find the reasons for this lack of historical material, we must realise that in those times both Portugal and Spain were bitter rivals in the race to open up and claim new territories in the Pacific region. Although both were great maritime nations, little Portugal was conscious of her inferior military power compared to the might of Spain and kept all her Pacific discoveries secret and hid the maps and records in government archives lest Spain should learn of her discoveries. The Spanish government thought the same way as her Portuguese rival so that every time an expedition returned to home port from a mission of exploration, all maps and records of the voyage were confiscated by government officials. These records remained unknown for so long that after both nations declined as maritime powers their accomplishments went unknown, hidden away for centuries. Only in recent generations have historians begun to rediscover these lost maps and manuscripts which are beginning to paint an entirely new picture of the true history of Australia's discovery and exploration. Portugal certainly led the way in maritime skills of the period. This hardy little nation's seafaring achievements owed their success to the foresight of one man, Prince Henry The Navigator. Born in
1394, Prince Henry was the son of the Portuguese Prince Joao (later King Joao 1) and an English princess, Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt. In 1419, Henry rejected the then-popular Church-inspired superstition that there were no lands beyond the vast Atlantic Ocean and that to sail too far out to sea was to sail right off the edge of the world. Instead, he reasoned from the writings of the ancient Greek, Roman and other geographers, that other lands already known to the ancients awaited rediscovery beyond the horizon. So, this far-sighted visionary established a residence, the Fortaleza, at Sagres on Cape St Vincent, where he set up a scientific academy to which he invited all the learned thinkers, explorers, geographers, cartographers, navigational instrument-makers, ship-builders, astronomers and other men of knowledge to meet and pool their ideas. This soon resulted in the development of revolutionary (for that time) techniques in navigation and a new streamlined ocean-going vessel, the caravel, which was based in part on the Arab dhow with its lateen sail. Soon Portuguese mariners set out to find the sea passage to India and the Spice Islands, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and sailing into the Indian Ocean and on into Pacific waters. By the time Henry died in 1460 he had seen his nation set out on the path to greatness. In 1512, just 20 years after Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America (the Vikings actually preceded him), the Portuguese explorer Antonio de Abreu found the island of Timor 285 miles (428 km) off the Australian west coast after entering the Pacific in the Moluccas area-making him the 'discoverer' of the Pacific Ocean a year before the better-known 'discovery' of this same ocean by Balboa. After the establishment of the Portuguese colony of Timor that followed Abreti's discovery, Portuguese mariners must have sighted our coastline, for in 1522 Portuguese explorer Christovao de Mendoncca sailed from Timor with three caravels in an attempt to circumnavigate and chart the "Great South Land". He sailed down our east coast, mapping as he went, until the present site of Warnambool, Victoria, where his chart stops dead. Here he is said to have lost one of his vessels in a storm and turned back the way he had come. Perhaps the mysterious mahogany shipwreck, believed buried in sandhills near the town but not seen on the surface since last century, is this ship. Modern reconstruction of this distorted map of Australia shows that Mendoncca included, among other major harbours of the east coast, that now-famous inlet south of Port Jackson which he named Coste des Herbages, or "Botany Bay" in English! It is obvious that Lieutenant James Cook already had prior knowledge of where he was going long before he left England in 1767 on his 'voyage of discovery'. Secrecy surrounded the whole enterprise and it is obvious that the British Admiralty officials provided him with copies of certain early maps of the Australian region. Among these, it is strongly suspected, was the Mendoncca map. James Cook must have been aware of the Mendoncca chart and therefore knew where he was going. Cook landed in Botany Bay on 30th April 1770, but why did he not bother to enter Sydney Harbour? Did he already have sufficient (secret) information on the harbour from some previous visitor? How did Botany Bay come to be given the same name as that on the Mendoncca chart - "Coste des Herbages"? On 11th June when the Endeavour struck the Great Barrier Reef and Cook made for nearby Cooktown Harbour (a place he had never seen before) for repairs, how was he able to state that the harbour was much smaller than he had been led to believe? Perhaps there were earlier Portuguese explorers in the Pacific before Antonio de Abreu (1512), if early maps are any guide. For example, celebrated late-15th century cosmographer Martin Behaim of Nuremberg, Germany, produced a world globe in 1492 on which he described Java Major", the mysterious "Great South Land". The map is crude and distorted but I have found that, upon re-arranging its outline with modem projection techniques, a reasonable resemblance to Australia can be seen. We must also take into account the general crudity of map-making in that period. Another map, dating from 1502, drawn by an unknown Portuguese cartographer and depicting the known world of that time, shows a southern land far to the east of the Cape of Good Hope. Tales of the "Land of Ophir", the Isle of Gold or Great South Land which abounded in all manner of riches, had persisted since biblical times and they played a large part in the rival Portuguese and Spanish explorations of the Pacific.
Their quarrelling over who should control what was beginning to get out of hand, and led Pope Alexander VI in 1493 to divide the world between them. He drew a line on a world map that extended from pole to pole. However, the line of demarcation passed through where the 'unknown' continent of Australia exists, right through where Western Australia is now situated. The Pope knew that Portugal wanted to keep her Atlantic territories such as the Azores and Cape Verde Islands, and that Spain refused to give up her conquests in the Americas. He did not, however, realise that both powers secretly wanted the Australian continent to be placed on their side of the line. Pope Alexander declared that all non-Catholic lands to the east of that line were to be the property of Portugal, and those to the west those of Spain. This was agreed to in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. As later events showed, neither power appears to have respected the treaty-as evidenced by Mendoncca's 1522 voyage down the 'Spanish' Australian east coast, and Spain's seizure of the Portuguese Philippines in 1562. In any event, Spain soon dominated the Australian region as her explorers sailed from the Americas to explore and colonise her Pacific territories and seek out the Isle of Gold, Australia. In 1522, Ferdinand Magellan and his men became the first to cross the Pacific Ocean. Voyages by such brave adventurers as Saavedra, Mendana, Sarmiento and Quiros followed. But soon the Isle of Gold would attract the Dutch, the French and the British. Somewhere along the way, Portugal and Spain faded away as major sea powers during a fight between Holland and England over the Spice Islands. These events, however, were in the future. With the Portuguese losing ground, the Spaniards made a mighty effort to explore and colonise the Great South Land. Why they failed in the end to establish a permanent hold on our shores was due to several factors. By the time her galleons were sailing Australian and New Zealand waters, Spain's trans-Pacific trade routes had become overextended, and it had become increasingly difficult to balance the defence requirements of their vast empire against decreasing returns from the colonies. Coupled with these problems was just plain bad luck! Expeditions frequently sailed off course or were abandoned when supplies ran low. Vessels were lost, or colonies, once established, fell victim to disease and native attacks and were abandoned. Had they succeeded, Australians might very well be speaking Spanish today. Evidence of one of these generally unknown off-course landfalls on Australia's shores exists on a windswept rock on the water's edge in Botany Bay: ancient engravings that could help alter the history of Australia. Lawrence Hargrave, Australia's 'Father of Aviation" and an historian of some repute, was exploring the foreshores of Botany Bay one day in 1912 when he discovered carvings that could help prove that Captain Cook, RN, was not the first mariner to enter the inlet. The carvings consist of letterings and the outlines of two ships - one a galleon, the other a carrack (a vessel steered by a sweep, like a Greek trireme), resembling the Santa Maria in which Columbus sailed to America in 1492. The letterings, in capitals beside the ship, were "B A L N' on one line and, beneath, "Z A I H". The letter "W" was beside the symbol of the cross within an elongated circle, the symbol of intended conquest by Spain. It was emblazoned on the sails of the Spanish Armada and the ships of the conquistadors on their voyages to the Americas. Hargrave identified the letterings as Spanish Latin 'doodles'-a form of Latin shorthand used during the 15th to 17th centuries. They were translated to read, 'We in the Santa Barbara and Santa Isabel conquered "W" from point to point by the sign of the Cross." A I H' could have been the rock signatures of witnesses to the declaration, he believed. Nearby, Hargrave discovered a faded Spanish-style coat of arms engraved on a rock next to a deep square excavation in the solid rock, presumably for catching rainwater. Aboriginal rock art nearby depicts, among other subjects, human figures clothed in the outlines of what appear to be Spanish soldiers' armour of the 16th century. About this time, Hargrave also examined two stout ringbolts leaded through the solid rock on the waterfront at Point Piper in Sydney Harbour. Hargrave deduced that a small vessel had been
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moored there and that the iron ring-bolts had been used to secure ropes to the masts to keep the ship upright at low water while the hull was cleaned of marine organisms. The spacing between the bolts corresponded with the mast placings of such a ship. The evidence was enough to convince Hargrave that, long before the arrival of Captain Cook in the Endeavour in 1770, a Spanish expedition had sailed into Botany Bay and possibly explored nearby Sydney Harbour. Historians have speculated whether the names Santa Barbara and Santa Isabel were the same two ships of those names which were lost from the second Pacific expedition of Alvaro Mendana de Neyra, despatched to find and colonise Australia in 1595. These names, however, were common in Spanish shipping of the period. On his first expedition, Alvaro Mendana de Neyra sailed from Callao, Peru, on 20th November 1567 with two ships, 150 men (four of whom were friars) and orders to establish a settlement. After a voyage of 80 days, the expedition sighted land in February 1568. The land appeared at first to be so large that it was taken to be a continent, but instead soon turned out to be the Solomon Islands. Due to the increasingly poor condition of his ships, Mendana decided not to establish a settlement and so returned to New Spain. Officialdom moved slowly and it would be another 37 years before Mendana would be able to lead another expedition in search of the Great South Land. By now, the Dutch were moving swiftly to establish themselves in the Spice Islands, and the Spaniards, with a fleet commanded by Mendana, hoped to head off the ambitious Dutch. Mendana's fleet consisted of three galleons, a frigate and a carrack, with Pedro Fernandez de Quiros as chief pilot and captain of Mendana's galleon, the San Jeronimo. Lope de Vega commanded the Santa Isabel, Felipe Corzo commanded the San Felipe, and Alonzo de Leyva commanded the frigate Santa Catalina. The carrack was named the Santa Barbara. After sailing from Callao, on 9th April 1595, the expedition reached the Marquesas Islands without incident. However, while negotiating the Ellis Islands, the fleet struck bad weather during which the Santa Isabel became separated. Following a fruitless search for the lost vessel, Mendana's remaining ships discovered Santa Cruz Island. After despatching the Santa Barbara to continue the search for the missing Santa Isabel, Mendana attempted to establish a colony on Santa Cruz, but attacks by the native population, sickness and mutinous outbursts among the ships' crews doomed the venture, especially after Mendana fell ill and died. The remainder of his expedition sailed for the Philippines, Mendana's attempt to establish a Spanish Australian Empire at an end. However, the mystery of the eventual fate of the Santa Isabel and Santa Barbara remains, for neither ship was ever seen again. The theory is that the two ships, if they were not sunk, may have somehow reunited, sailing about 3,000 kilometres off course to find the Australian east coast and enter Botany Bay 175 years ahead of James Cook and at least 10 years before the first Dutch explorer, Willem Jansz, reached our shores in 1606. The Botany Bay mystery continues. Besides the Aboriginal rock engravings mentioned earlier in relation to the Latin inscription, many more Aboriginal carvings occur around the shoreline depicting human figures clad in garments reminiscent of Spanish soldiers in breastplates and helmets. Perhaps after a long stay in Botany Bay the explorers sailed north along the Australian east coast in an attempt to find their way to the Spanish occupied Philippines, only to be wrecked near Cape York Peninsula. In 1859 when the barque Marina was wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef north of Cooktown, her crew landed on Raine Island to the east of Cape York Peninsula and found an old wreck with a brass cannon bearing an inscription, "Santa Barbara 1596', engraved on the barrel. In 1967, 108 years later, skin-divers recovered from a reef nearby the island a bronze cannonade whose barrel was also inscribed with Santa Barbara 1596". In 1946 at Tamarama near Botany Bay, a schoolboy found an old bronze Spanish swivel-cannon protruding from sand after a bad storm had exposed it. There are some curious Aboriginal traditions of the Clarence River, Grafton district which point to a further unsung attempt by Spain to settle Australia in the 16th century. For example, the
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TOP PICTURE: Two cannon-balls now in Rex Gilroys possession. Together with many other relics, they were recovered by skin-divers in the 1970s from an ancient shipwreck near Townsville, Queensland, believed to be that of a 16th century Spanish galleons. BOTTOM PICTURE: Rex Gilroy
examining a strange Aboriginal rockcarving of a human figure near Gosford on the Hawkesbury River, north of Sydney. The figure displays the outlines of trouser legs and boots as well as a barrel-like chest with spiked elbows and knees the outlines of armour joints typical of Spanish soldiers of the 16th century conquistador period. Photos copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
former Aborigines of the Grafton district last century told settlers that long, long before the coming of the British, other white men and women had tried to settle the area. These "culture heroes", dressed in stone garments (armour), had sailed up the river from the coast in giant "canoes". They soon erected a large camp surrounded by a wooden palisade. It appears the unwelcome visitors then began building more substantial wooden dwellings and tried to subjugate the Aborigines. But the Aborigines fought back, and the stone-suited intruders abandoned their settlement and sailed back to the coast whence they had come. Many of the Aborigines met by the early British settlers in the Grafton district possessed tell-tale Latin features with pale skins, and still used Spanish words in their language. A number of 16th-century Spanish coins have been dug up around Grafton and elsewhere along the Clarence River over the years. Perhaps the Spaniards who came here were looking for gold. An Aboriginal tradition of the Tweed River tribes tells of strange men in stone garments attempting to mine the Mount Warning area many generations before the coming of the British. As further evidence to support this tradition, a farmer dug up an old morrion helmet at Kunghur, out of Nimbin, further to the south; and skin-divers claimed years ago to have retrieved a number of 16th-century Spanish coins and other relics from the remains of an old wooden shipwreck off Tweed Heads. Perhaps another old shipwreck further down the coast at Byron Bay holds more secrets. This wreck, buried in sand near the town, has the potential to provide practical proof that Australia's east coast was explored and mapped by either Portuguese or Spanish seafarers long before Cook's arrival, if recent (1993) radiocarbon-14 dating of wood samples from the wreck is any guide. This New South Wales mahogany ship at present appears to be far more substantial evidence than Victoria's better-known mahogany ship whose existence is based upon mainly 19th century folklore. Early settlers of the district last century knew of the Byron Bay wreck, and as late as the 1950s people could still recall the remains of three masts protruding from the sand to a height of three metres and at an angle of 45 degrees. Sandmining operations later bulldozed the masts out of the way. Much earlier residents could recall portions of the hull protruding above the sand. Then, in 1965, workmen at the site unearthed a long wooden rudder which has since disappeared. It appears that workmen souvenired some fragments including two wooden pegs of yew wood, used instead of metal nails to fasten the ship's planks together.
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Samples from one of these pegs, carbon-dated recently by American scientists, showed the wreck to date from the period 1450-1500. This was perhaps more the period of Portuguese than Spanish seafaring in these waters. But whatever its origin, the Byron Bay wreck is definite proof of pre-Dutch/British visitations to Australia. The wreck's position is itself a further indication of its great age, for it is situated high up above the present shoreline and some distance inland from the surf at Suffolk Park. It is obvious that the shoreline has receded considerably since the vessel was wrecked, no doubt in some fierce storm. But what do the local Aboriginal people have to say about the Suffolk Park wreck? Although only three descendants survive today from the former Du-urumbul tribe that once roamed the district, they have preserved a tradition about the wreck. The story goes that the shipwreck occurred long before the coming of the British. The ship's crew struggled ashore and for a time lived in a nearby cave. They eventually began molesting the women of the Du-urumbul tribe, and the warriors retaliated by killing them all. Although a proper scientific excavation of the wreck will be needed to reveal its true dimensions, present indications are that it is quite large, at least caravel-sized. Sand miners involved in the discovery of the rudder in 1965 say it was 4.2 metres (14 feet) in length, while others who recall seeing the hull say it once protruded at least 12.2 metres (40 feet) before the sands gradually covered it. The size of the rudder suggests to some experts that the ship could have been between 51 and 75 metres (170 to 250 feet) long. (As I write this chapter, news has arrived that the wreck site has been protected from any further sandmining, and that a proper scientific archaeological excavation of the wreck is now being planned.) It is just possible that the wreck's survivors, in the course of exploring the area, may have left behind rock engravings or even a single Latin 'doodle' inscription similar to the Botany Bay inscription. If such is ever found and can be translated, we may learn a lot more about this hitherto-unknown disastrous landfall on the Australian east coast. Further north up the coast at Queensland's Fraser Island, sightseers occasionally find an ancient wooden wreck known for generations by locals. Only the keel and ribs of the vessel remain now, viewable at low tide. It is argued that the wreck dates to pre-British times. It is reminiscent of another wreck situated near Coolum Beach on the Sunshine Coast. Made of European oak with the planking nailed together with wooden pegs, the wreck is buried deep in sand and only visible when exposed by bad storms. Tales of old Spanish galleons and other vessels wrecked along the Queensland coast are many, and in most cases the work of tourism officers, but some stories are genuine. There is the tradition of a galleon wreck on Facing Island off Gladstone, which James Cook is believed to have inspected on his voyage up the east coast in 1770-even though he 'soft-pedalled' the incident upon his return to England, for it denoted a pre-British explorer. During the 1930s, an old, crumbling human skeleton was found laid out upon a sandstone crevice in a deep rock-shelter hidden in the mountains behind Mackay. It was clothed in a morrion helmet and breastplate. Also in the 1930s, two other such skeletons clothed in Spanish armour were found preserved in a cave behind Cooktown. Even in recent times, many old Spanish coins continue to be washed up on the Cooktown shore. Some locals claim the coins come from the remains of a Spanish vessel wrecked offshore. In recent years, evidence has emerged from the Northern Territory suggesting a Spanish colony may have been attempted on the Arnhem Land coast for the purpose of mining gold deposits in the interior. Such an operation would have required a considerable number of people besides sailors and soldiers. Settlers must have been involved, so they would have brought their families with them. Perhaps a number of Peruvian slaves were brought along to help in the mining operations. Horses and mules would have been necessities. Where they penetrated is unestablished, but Aboriginal traditions speak of a population of white people who settled the region generations before the first British arrived in Arnhem Land. The region's cave and rock art includes depictions of human figures in Spanish armour-type garments with horses, and Aborigines have directed Europeans to sites where open-cut mining and alluvial gold digging was carried out by the early visitors.
13
Some fragments of Peruvian pottery have turned up at these sites, situated deep in what is now the Arnhem Land Reserve, and the Aborigines claim these gold-seekers penetrated further inland. They are adamant that they are not confusing these visitors with Chinamen who came much earlier. Similar traces to the above, suggesting unrecorded Spanish visits and long-time settlement attempts, have been found in New Guinea, various West Pacific islands and New Zealand. It is also very likely that many unrecorded Spanish contacts with the Australian region were the result of expeditions to the Spice Islands being blown off course. Expeditions by Spain across the Pacific only became possible after the 'discovery' of that ocean from the American side by Vasco Nunez de Balboa. Placed in command of a small colony on the Gulf of Darien, he sighted this ocean in 1513 from the heights of the Sierra de Quarequa. After reaching the shore he waded knee-deep into the surf, and with his uplifted sword in one hand, and the standard of Castille in the other, he took formal possession of it for Castille and for Leon. From 1505 to 1507, the Court of Spain was earnestly engaged in finding a direct route to the Spice Islands. Expeditions were despatched from the Americas for this purpose. The Portuguese were also making progress from their side of the world and, having already visited Australia and perhaps New Zealand's North Island, were way ahead of the Spaniards. They had already made voyages to the Spice Islands but kept their visits secret especially their voyages to the Great South Land, as has already been shown. Who, then, was the first Spanish explorer to sight Australia? About 1519, Sebastian del Cano of the Victoria, while on his way from the Philippines to Spain via the Cape of Good Hope, reported having seen islands south of the tropic of Capricorn. He may have been the first Spaniard to sight Australian land. The discovery of Australia by Spain is bound up with their 'discovery' of New Guinea. Not long after del Cano's voyage, the 1526 Franciscus Monachus Mappa Mundi appeared. A two-sphered world map, it belongs to a work entitled De Orbis Situ, which contains the following remarkable Latin passage. "Moreover, in the year 1526, a land has been discovered by 0 degrees longitude and 52 degrees south latitude which is not inhabited. The other parts of that Austral country are yet in the dark." In 1527, Cortez sent his kinsman, Alvaro de Saavedra, from New Spain to search for the lost expedition of Garcia Jofre de Loaysa which had earlier been despatched with both Portuguese and Spanish seamen with the task of ascertaining the Line of Demarcation of 1494. Saavedra's expedition reached the Spice Islands, and on his way back to the Americas in June 1528 he sighted land 250 leagues east of the Spice Islands. He named the land "Isla del Oro"-the "Island of Gold". Apart from the voyage along the north coast of New Guinea by Don Jorge de Menezes in 1526, no other earlier Spanish explorer of New Guinea is known. But there must have been someone before Menezes because the map of the East Indies, drawn by Pedro de Reinel in 1517, clearly shows the north-west peninsula of New Guinea, as numerous historians have pointed out. As the 1500s wore on, Portugal and Spain began to fade from the scene as major powers in the Pacific. The French were moving into these waters, which, in the end, would be dominated by the Dutch and finally the British. These early voyages to Australia by adventurous European seafarers between the 15th and 16th centuries may have opened the first page of our modern history, but they also closed the last page of our 'unknown' history-a history of discovery and exploration by seafaring peoples who girded the Earth back into Bronze Age times, thousands of years before Magellan or Drake. Whoever among them was the actual 'first' discoverer of our continent will perhaps forever remain a mystery shrouded in the mists of time, yet there is more than enough evidence to show that Australia was, indeed, a land known to the civilisations of antiquity.
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During archaeological investigations at Cooktown, in Queenslands far north, in October 2002, the Gilroys uncovered mystery stone ruins in dense bushland. Nearby, projecting from the soil, Rex Gilroy found a large stone carving of a reclining figure holding a bowl. Measuring 41.5cm length by 24.5cm tall and 7cm thick, this sandstone carving was soon identified as an image of Chac Mool, the Mayan God of Rain. The image shows a tear coming from the right eye and air coming from the right side of the mouth. The Mayan culture began about 2000 BC in southern Mexico, Guatamala and areas of Belize, and had a golden age that began about 250 AD, lasting until around 900 AD, during which their maritime expeditions penetrated far across the Pacific. It appears some of their explorers reached northern Australia. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
This Aztec map shows the migration of a tribe across the Pacific Ocean to the lost paradise of Culhuacan the great land to the west, at the centre of which stood a great red rock as can be seen on the map. This great red rock could only have been Ayers Rock [Uluru] in Central Australia!
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Mysterious Australia Newsletter November, 2011.
Adam Mulquin , 3 and his brother Gregory 7, play with a mystery head carving, found by residents clearing bushland at Leumeah, in Sydneys south-west, in August 1977.The massive stone carving resembles some Olmec stone heads from the Gulf of Mexico, dating between 1200 and 400 BC [Photo from The Sun, Wednesday 24/8/77] Is this relic evidence of Amerindian cross-Pacific voyages to Australia?
The Spanish Latin doodle rock inscription, found near Botany Bay in 1912 by Lawrence Hargrave. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
In 2000 leading Gilroy field assistant Greg Foster uncovered a set of old Spanish Latin doodles [ie shorthand] upon a rock ledge overlooking a creek near Castle Hill outside Sydney. When shown by Greg, Rex Gilroy found further faded inscriptions. Their translation later revealed the following: We of the galleon Santa Barbara, of 51 crew for Holy Spain, in search of gold, together with the San Fileppe, with 51 crewmen, San Jeronimo with 75 crew, Santa Catalina and Santa Isabel with 57 crew each, sailed in search of the West Land of gold, on April 9th 1595. Alvaro Mendana de Neyra of the San Jeronimo our leader. Separated we sailed. We claim this land for Holy Spain. This inscription suggests the Santa Barbara and Santa Isabel and their occupants spent some time in the Sydney district during which they carried out some exploration inland. Photo copyright Rex Gilroy 2011.
Please Note!!
Our previous meetings have been huge successes and we look forward to seeing you at our next one.
Our next meeting will be held on SATURDAY 20 December, 2011 same time, same place 12 Kamillaroi Road, Katoomba. [Ph: 02 47823441] So until our next meeting Watch the Skies!
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The latest Gilroy Book BIG Cats of the Australian Wilderness. $55 plus $10 p&h.
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Mysterious Australia Newsletter - November 2011

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Mysterious Australia Newsletter - November 2011

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Mysterious Australia Newsletter November, 2011

THE LAND THAT WAITED. YOWIES AND THYLACINES ALIVE