'TIME CAPSULE' AT BONNIE VALE CAMPGROUNDS - NATIONAL PARKS AND WILDLIFE SERVICE

7NEWS featured a story on Bonnie Vale Campground last Monday night.  

Extent has undertaken a whole range of assessments that have yielded interesting results on how Aboriginal people have used the area in the past while informing appropriate conservation and management of the Aboriginal cultural resource at Bonnie Vale Campground. Shell and stone artefacts found during test excavations across Bonnie Vale Campground reflected a continuous Aboriginal cultural landscape that was used for hundreds of years for varying activities and uses. We have done extensive analysis on landform patterning which highlighted relationships between the location of shell and stone artefact types on different landforms and at differing distances to both saltwater and swamp.

In essence, the Bonnie Vale Campground can be seen as a recent ‘time capsule’ preserving a physical record of recent Dharawal occupation and use over the last thousand years.

We also produced this video to highlight the rich history this landscape has to offer: