Little Rocky Creek, next to Old Gympie Road near Landsborough, is a historical site used by the Gubbi Gubbi (Kabi Kabi) people for tool making. The sandstone bed made for a perfect place for grinding tools with the ready flow of water.
The grooves were used to make tools such as axe heads, spearheads, and cutting stones. There are over eighty of the grooves in the rock surface, made over many generations.
Hard stone from Wild Horse or Glass House Mountains was carried in. After roughly shaping the tool, they were sharpened by placing some sand in the grooves and rubbing the tool back and forth until an edge was made.
The tools were used for chopping shields, cutting into tree hollows for food such as accessing honey or extracting possums, making canoes and spears, crushing nuts and seeds, and for fighting.
The rock bed in Little Rocky Creek provided a natural bridge to cross the creek when this was the road between Brisbane and the Gympie Goldfields in the mid 1800s. Coach wheel marks from Cobb & Co coaches have been left on the rock bed.
In the creek is a stone jutting out and appears oddly out of place. I wondered if this was used as a marker or guide for the coaches crossing the creek. It lines up well for where the coach groves are in the rock, but I cannot find any information about it.
Walking from the parking area, follow the path keeping to the right when it forks. The left path simply goes to the road to cross the bridge.
The short path leads to the first rock bed, which has the more easily seen grooves. Stairs lead down to the rock bed for exploring.
The second rock bed has more grooves. Go back up the stairs and continue straight ahead to lead down to it. It is a bit rougher and you may need to scramble down part of it.