A 200-year-old mystery about one of Newcastle’s most famous pieces of Aboriginal art history may have been solved, with a new theory about the location of a Joseph Lycett painting.
Lycett was a convict and one of Australia’s earliest colonial artists.
The painting, done about 1820, was labelled as “Aborigines spearing fish, others diving for crayfish; a party seated beside a fire cooking fish”.
Newcastle environmentalist Dianna Mannigel believes the location is the Eleebana bluff at Rocky Point on Lake Macquarie.
She said the ranges in the background could be Munibung Hill or Mount Sugarloaf, depending on the angle.
