Lost Australian Colonies of the Bronze Age God-Kings - Part One

I dedicate this series to my wife and fellow researcher, Heather, whose constant dedicated assistance in every aspect of our work together, is for me a continual inspiration. Without here support it is doubtful that many of our greatest archaeological discoveries would have been possible.

Lost Australian Colonies of the Bronze Age God-Kings Part 2

By Rex Gilroy
Copyright (c) Rex Gilroy 2003

[This article is composed of material from the book ”Pyramids of Destiny - Lost Pacific Colonies of the Bronze Age God-Kings” by Rex and Heather Gilroy. Copyright (c) Rex Gilroy 2003, URU Publications, now in preparation.]

Pyramids have always had a mystical hold on the mind of man. Why is this so? What is it about the pyramid shape that captures our imagination?

They are to be found from the desert sands of Egypt to the jungles of New Guinea and Australia, certain west Pacific Islands and Central America. It puzzles me why worldwide attention seems permanently focused upon the geometric dimensions of the Great pyramid of Giza, and those of the old Amerindian civilisations, while those of the Australia-west Pacific region continue to attract little or no attention from conservative archaeology, both here and overseas.

Is it because they are an embarrassing enigma, demonstrating that the earth was explored and mapped thousands of years before the age of Magellan or Cook? There was a time when the now vandalised “Gympie Pyramid”, north of Brisbane, Queensland was the only known relic of its kind in Australia.

Lost Australian Colonies of the Bronze Age God-Kings Part 2 cont...

However, in recent years the list has grown to include the “lost pyramid of far north Queensland”, reported in Part One of this series; two straight-sided pyramids standing side-by-side on the NSW south coast; and recently, another stepped pyramid, slightly smaller than the Gympie example but virtually intact and hidden in jungle on private property. The fate of the Gympie structure is too well known to rate repeating here, and to avoid the same fate we are keeping the exact locations of these relics ‘Top Secret’.

Wherever a pyramid is found, it was raised as the centre piece of a mining colony, as has been the case with every pyramid or Sumerian ziggurat so far uncovered in Australia by Heather and I. The Gympie Pyramid, whose four sides faced the four points of the compass, measured 60m in height by 125m in length at each its four bases. There were 18 terraces, each about 1.2m in height, by up to 2.4m wide from the base terrace up, narrowing towards the summit, where the last terraces were a mere 60cm width. The top four terraces were constructed with huge ironstone slabs weighing from 2-4 tonnes, whereas those forming the other 14 terraces were much smaller, down to a size where they could be picked up by one or both hands. The flat summit was formed of a massive 8 tonne slab.

When Heather and I first stumbled upon this structure, climbing it on the afternoon of Monday 27th October 1975, it did not take us long to realise it was a crudely-built pyramid, reminiscent of those built in Egypt during the 3rd dynasty period, until the step formation was superceded by the straight-sided design. The pyramid stood on the edge of a long dried up inlet, being part of a harbour that extended inland from Tin Can Bay on the coast. A stone wharf once stood at the southern base of the pyramid, and a great stone causeway extended out from high ground to the structure on its north face.

The pyramid summit was flat, and a large altar stone once stood here, beside a large libation bowl broken in three pieces by ages of weathering [these were later smashed by religious fanatics]. Rock inscriptions in a mixture of Egypto-Phoenician, even Libyan, identified the structure as a Sun-worship/ceremonial pyramid also used for astronomical observations.

Ancient ruins found scattered over a wide area of the Gympie region show this pyramid was at the centre of a large colony, inhabited by perhaps 3,000 or more mineral-seeking colonists, whose ancient open-cut mining sites suggest vast quantities of gold were extracted from the district, as well as tin and copper [needed in the manufacture of bronze].

Such a huge colony would have required a ruling class, and in May 1995, I recovered a large, phallic-shaped stone bearing a mixed Egypto-Phoenician/Libyan inscription stating:

“Na-ta-wa, Pharaoh of this land of Ra, commands you to assemble here to
worship the god”.

Who was this Pharaoh? Was it for him that the Gympie Pyramid was built? Other inscriptions now confirm the Gympie colony was named ‘Ra’. For the full details on the Gympie Egyptian mining colony the reader is directed to “Pyramids in the Pacific - The Unwritten History of Australia” by Rex Gilroy, URU Publications.

The colony was massive, extending west to the Murgon district [a major mineral/gemstone-bearing region] and for some great distance north and south of Gympie, then eastwards to Tin Can Bay where more traces of settlement are found, and northwards to Maryborough, where remains of a Ra sun-worship temple are known to Heather and I near the Mary River, which flows from the coast into Gympie. Today the Mary River is unnavigable into Gympie, but when the water table was higher 3,000 and more years ago, the waterways into Gympie would have enabled numbers of large triremes to penetrate here.

On the southern shore of the inlet opposite the Gympie Pyramid, in 1966 the late Dal K Berry ploughed up a large ironstone idol the Egyptian god of writing and knowledge, Thoth, in ape form. A smaller, ironstone slab idol of Thoth was recovered by me at the western base of the pyramid in 1977.

During our August 2003 Queensland expedition, Heather and I happened to stop at a beach near Bowen. Chancing upon a rubble-strewn area of mangroves, where I detected the remains of ancient stonework, I happened to see, wedged between two boulders, a stone image. Gently removing it from its wedged situation I discovered that, although the outer patina had been eaten away through centuries of salt water action, I had recovered the image of a squatting ape of the baboon form.

Much of the feet had been eaten away, and while the end of a tail could still be seen projecting below the left side of the figure, the rest of it had broken away long ago. Two fading Phoenician letters on the left side of the body identified the image - “T - h”, short for “Thoth”. Prior to around 1000 BC Thoth was depicted as an ape, after which he became an ibis-headed, human-bodied deity who recorded the judgement of the souls in Amenti, the afterworld. The August 2003 expedition has been our most successful in Queensland to date and will require a separate report in this journal at a future date.

The Bowen area revealed a major find during our latest search. While investigating remains of what appears to have been an ancient stone wharf amid piles of ores removed from ancient mining sites, I found two inscribed slabs. Upon cleaning them I found one to depict the Egyptian god Horus crudely etched into the rock, on the back of which were the Phoenician letters spelling “Horus”. The second image was that of a seated Pharonic male figure with crown and holding a crook and flail.

Accompanying Phoenician letterings were afterwards translated to read:
“Na-ta-wa Pharaoh of the Sun”.

In the Mackay district there are extensive remains of ancient pitchblend mining [among other minerals]. Pitchblend was used by Bronze-Age smiths to harden metals. It was in this area in 1980 that a young geologist unearthed a grey slate tablet which he later gave to me.

The tablet is inscribed in Phoenician and reads on both sides:

“To Baal the Sun who stands above all, a pillar has been erected and inscribed by Hanaga,
who sailed here with two ships of the Sun for Na-ta-wa, ruler of this land.
Wasi carried out measurements of the Sun during the winter and erected a temple,
where on Beltaine [ie May Day] with Gavin, Hakoe and Tanin made libations of water”.

From what has so far been uncovered, it would appear that Na-ta-wa was a Pharaoh of considerable power and wealth, another Bronze-Age god-king, whose seat of government was at Gympie, from where during his reign he would have controlled all the northern mining colonies, and surely also others further south.

One of the most important north Queensland colonies stands at Sarina, south of Mackay, where the “Truth Hunter” team [of which the Gilroys are members], led by the discoverer of the colony, historian/geologist Val Osborne, together with Gilbert Deem and Wayne Freemantle, has been uncovering a vast system of open-cut mines from which gold, tin, copper, pitchblend, and other minerals was extracted by perhaps up to 3,000 miners during Bronze-Age times [2000-1400 BC]. Not only was a now collapsed massive basalt wall constructed around Sarina Inlet by the ancient colonists, but also a great stone wharf, built of ores from the mines inland as well as around the shores and on offshore Great Barrier Reef islands.

Rock inscriptions in Phoenician, Celto-Phoenician, Libyan and Egyptian being uncovered throughout the Sarina district, speak not only of rulers’ names, but the daily lives of the people, as well as religious messages. Crumbling walls, ruined temples and shrines, toppled massive stone heads of the sun-god Baal; and hundreds of rock inscriptions lying scattered about the ancient mining sites, or hidden in the jungle, which tell of events lost to history, and the names of unknown Pharaohs, and ordinary workers, men, women and children long since turned to dust and whose names have not been spoken in 3,000 years. And about all this evidence of Australia’s lost history conservative university scholars remain strangely silent!

While these events were transpiring in Australia, there was also considerable activity taking place on our near island neighbours in Melanesia and New Zealand. In the depths of the Solomon Islands jungles, early 19th century European settlers were puzzled by the numerous stepped stone pyramids that they stumbled upon. The Abarihu ruling class of San Cristoval in the Solomons called themselves “Children of the Sun”, and claimed to be descended from the builders of the pyramids who introduced sun-worship to the islanders’ ancestors.

The early European settlers also uncovered remains of megalithic structures, and extensive traces of ancient open-cut gold and copper mining operations. Linked to these were native traditions that a race of pale-skinned gods from the Sun had once excavated these holes in the landscape, removing the rocks they unearthed, which they threw in fires [ie ancient smelting operations], then sailed away with them in great watercraft. How else could primitive islanders have described apparent Bronze-Age mining operations?
Similar ancient remains and traditions of apparent Bronze-Age mineral-seeking colonists are to be found throughout island Melanesia, but only New Zealand appears to hold evidence that, regardless of its small size, rivals Australia in the amount of evidence turning up there.

Since 1980 Heather and I have made regular field expeditions to both the North and South Islands, in the course of which we have uncovered mounting evidence which, together with that being discovered by a number of local prominent researchers, completely overturns the conservative tradition that Polynesian explorers were the first people to settle that land!

During our September 1998 field investigation, Heather and I were shown a megalithic site, consisting of two adjoining stone circles on a property in the Tauranga district [North Island], constructed of grey volcanic rock. Erected upon an north-south axis, the southern one, connected by a lined passageway to the northern circle, is actually more egg-shaped with two central stone markers and measures 15.2m length by 7.9m width, whereas the northern circle is 7.6m in radius. On its north-east side is an entrance marked by a row of three boulders flanking a much larger boulder on the eastern side.

This boulder has at its northern base a large altar stone. Engraved into the middle boulder of the three just mentioned are the Phoenician letters ‘I’ and “N’, being ancient ‘shorthand’ for “Iyatin”, meaning “Sun”.

A short distance away on the circle’s western side I found a pile of rocks amid which was a large stone of mineralised volcanic tuffa, upon which I detected letterings and symbols. The Phoenician inscription on this “message stone” confirmed my impression that the circle was an ancient sun-worship temple with Masonic links.The stone measured 40cm in length by 17cm width on each of its four sides, each side being engraved with script.

The inscription was later translated to read:

“At the temple of Baal, in the third month, the religious rites of the year of Baal the Sun are to take place.
At the temple of the Sun, in the name of Baal, the Earth’s measurer,
I, Ya-na, a son of Canaan, claim this land for King Shishonk,
on the second day of the month.
Proclaimed with Baal’s Eye in the heavens, at the temple of Baal,
before the pillars “Strength” and “Establishment” in the land of Baal.”

This inscription not only identified the site as a temple of the Phoenician Sun-God Baal with ancient masonic links, but helps to give the site an age of around 900 BC. This suggests that the King Shishonk of the inscription was Pharaoh Shishonk the 1st, who ascended the Egyptian throne in 952 BC at the time that King Solomon ruled ancient Israel.

In those times Egypt was called upon to assist in the provision of god, other valuable minerals, precious stones, timber and other materials required in the building of King Solomon’s Temple and other of Solomon’s projects in Jerusalem; and it is not unlikely that Pharaoh Shishonk dispatched the expeditions himself for this purpose into the Indian Ocean to Egypt’s gold mines in East Africa. Could he also have dispatched ships to south-east Asia and Australia where the Egyptians had, it seems evident, maintained a presence since Bronze-Age times?

Their ships, often manned by skilled Phoenician sailors, certainly penetrated Torres Strait to discover the Melanesian islands, where they would have found gold and copper. Traces of ancient mining operations have been uncovered, not only in the Solomons, but also in Fiji and other nearby island groups, often nearby ancient Middle-East rock scripts, dating to different periods of Egypt’s history down to Ptolemaic times. Voyages further south could have resulted in the discovery of New Zealand at the height of the Bronze-Age.

It is possible that the report of the captain of one such voyage that reached New Zealand, in which he described the amount of gold and copper found there, inspired Pharaoh Shishonk to dispatch a mining expedition there, consisting of a large fleet of ships, loaded with supplies and equipment, and a large force of crewmen and their families to establish a colony.

In command of this fleet the Pharaoh probably appointed Ya-na, who would have been a Phoenician captain of exceptional navigational skill. He must have been in command of an expedition to have had the authority to claim New Zealand for Pharaoh Shishonk, as recorded on the message stone.

The Tauranga “Shishonk Stone” is so far the earliest dateable written evidence of a Phoenician presence in New Zealand.

After our return to Australia, in August 1999, on the bank of the Darling River at Wilcannia, NSW while casually looking around, I chanced to see a squarish, broken stone of the ground. The sun was setting and as a result shadows cast upon the stone revealed a number of strange markings, which upon closer inspection, turned out to be Phoenician letterings.

The translation of the message on this 11 cm by 11.5 cm stone had us gasping:
“Habakuk discovered this land for Shishonk.”.

The engraver of this ancient message had once penetrated the interior of NSW by sailing into the Murray River at its South Australian mouth, thence into the Darling, to land where modern-day Wilcannia now stands. It is tempting to link this Shishonk with the one recorded on the Tauranga, NZ stone. However, there were four Pharaoh Shishonks. The ‘unwritten’ history of New Zealand’s Bronze-Age discovery and colonisation by explorers from the land of the Nile will be the subject of a future article of mine for Hard Evidence.

Returning to Australia, we find further evidence of Bronze-Age mining activity inland from Brisbane, on the Bremmer River, an offshoot of the Brisbane River, in the foothills of Toowoomba, west of Brisbane, Queensland, where besides a rich store of gemstone deposits is to be found, ancient miners also uncovered extensive deposits of gold, copper and tin in the surrounding districts.

During 1994 Heather and I uncovered large numbers of rock inscriptions in the Lowood area along the Bremmer River, which besides Egyptian, Phoenician and Libyan examples, also included Celtic Bronze-Age ogham. The later inscriptions suggest that this colony dated from around the 1500 BC period, when Celts from Iberia [Spain] joined the Phoenicians on joint expeditions to our part of the world.

In the course of time, through inter-mixture of their cultures, a local form of mixed Egypto-Phoenician, Celto-Phoenician and Libyan script developed. Variations of these are to be found Australia-wide, and also in New Zealand, if not elsewhere, wherever large colonies flourished.

In Part Three of this series I shall reveal important developments in our ongoing research into the Gosford district [NSW] Egyptian-Phoenician colony, and also another, recently-discovered one at a top-secret south coastal NSW location, at which ancient harbour stoneworks and two pyramids have been found by Heather and I and a team of trusted assistants.

[Rex and Heather Gilroy can be contacted at PO Box 202 Katoomba NSW 2780,
Phone [02]4782 3441, or through their email: randhgilroy@optusnet.com.au
Or catch their website on google and type in Rex Gilroy].