Stone walls near Jindabyne NSW: European fences, not Aboriginal stone arrangements

Two sets of stone walls located at Mill Creek and Ironpot Creek near Jindabyne NSW and a pair of parallel lines of stones near Ironpot Creek are believed by some to have been built by Aborigines for spiritual or astronomical purposes. However the structure of both sets of walls is typical of European dry stone walls elsewhere in Australia, and similar to other examples on a nearby property 35 km away. Furthermore, both sets of walls were charted and valued by surveyors as fence improvements on survey plans in the 1880s and 1890s. This paper compares these structures to other examples of European walls and Aboriginal stone arrangements, concluding that they are dry stone walls built in the late nineteenth century as boundary fences on steep rocky slopes. Either Aborigines, or Chinese miners returning from the Kiandra gold rush may have been employed to build them. Explanations invoking Aboriginal spiritual or astronomical uses are improbable and unnecessary. The double row of stones near Ironpot Creek is most likely to be a lockspit marking a reserved road between cadastral portions.