Strattons Amphitheatre Walk – 6 June 2019

Strattons Amphitheatre is a cave, in the Springwood area, possibly an aboriginal site, that has some old graffiti on one of its walls. As well as the cave, there is also a waterfall, and the creek there flows in a deep gorge – almost a canyon. Bob and myself set off to visit the Amphitheatre.

Strattons Amphitheatre

The cave is reached by following an old tourist track. The last part is almost long forgotten and not that easy to follow.

But once at the cave and amphitheatre, you know you are in the right place – as its hard to miss the large chiselled letters that spell out “M & J Stratton, 1913”. There is also plenty of other graffiti in the cave.

There was also a smaller “Stratton” painted on.

It was an interesting place, but on our visit, it was cold and gloomy. We looked at other parts of the cave for aboriginal art. There may be some there, and perhaps some hidden by the graffiti. But none obvious to us.

Further down the valley, we walked through another overhang, and looking at a rock, we could see another Stratton engraving.

These are the work of Joe and Mabel Stratton, who had a property on Grose Road, now where a quarry is located past Springwood High School.

We then had plenty of time left to explore further. We followed another old track up a side valley to a waterfall.

Then we climbed out onto the ridge above. On the way up, we passed through another interesting cave. It contained some Aboriginal artefacts. They looked recent, and may be used by a local aboriginal guide to show visitors.

We then gained the top of the ridge, and at some open rocky areas, we again looked around for aboriginal sites. We found a stone arrangement –

The platforms also features some nice tessellations.

Looking for sharpening grooves, we failed to find any, but instead found an engraving – what looks like a Kangaroo.

Plenty of pools, by no sharpening grooves.

We then followed the ridge along to its end. Along the way we had to cross some very interesting rocky outcrops. These were furrowed by deep channels.

We stopped on one of these for lunch.

We then had to descend steeply to get down to a larger creek. The cliff lines proved to be a major obstacle. We found a way we could almost scramble down to the bottom – but the last ten metres would not yield to an easy passage. So we had to back-track, climb back up and walk around further and then descend via a small gully.

We could then follow a good track back to Springwood. Not far from the roads, we spotted another interesting chiselled engraving.  This one is a memorial to “Paddy” a dog owned by Robert Scott. The dog died in 1917. It is one of three such carved memorials by Scott to his dog according to an interesting note in Hut News by John Low (page 10)