New Guinea II cave

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. New Guinea II is one of three major cave systems that have so far been investigated in the middle Snowy River area, along with New Guinea Cave (NG-1), and Nuigini Namba Fav Cave (NG-5, NG-6. New Guinea II is largely joint-controlled, although the entrance area is formed along bedding planes and has a large chamber and passage with a perennial stream and several entrances. Finger or tool marks made in the dried mud on the cave wall are thought to be of prehistoric Aboriginal origin and are similar to those of Koonalda Cave on the Nullarbor Plain. New Guinea II is the first place where such markings have been recorded in Victoria. Animal origin has been proposed for the wall markings, although many appear to be in regular patterns, including circles and diagonal crosses. They are also generally on smoother parts of the walls and some are in now-dark and inaccessible parts of the

Cave data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).