Kariong, New South Wales facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Kariong Central Coast, New South Wales
Kariong Location in New South Wales
Population	6,385 (2016 census)
Postcode(s)	2250
Location	7 km (4 mi) WSW of Gosford
LGA(s)	Central Coast Council
Parish	Patonga
State electorate(s)	Gosford
Federal Division(s)	Robertson

Kariong is a locality of the Central Coast region of New South Wales, Australia west of Gosford along the Central Coast Highway. It is part of the Central Coast Council local government area.

History

Kariong's first British settler was W.H. Parry in 1901. The Mt Penang Training School for boys was opened in 1911. Many of the boys came from the training ship Sobraon, which had been in Sydney Harbour before being condemned, as did former officer Basil Topple.

Etymology

Kariong was once believed to mean meeting place in the local Aboriginal language. Other early residents were told the name meant "place of the cold winds", and the name is listed, albeit with a different spelling, in F.D. McCarthy's Australian Aboriginal place names book of 1946 with this meaning. However, records in the NSW Mitchell Library show that the name Kariong was a typographical error from old script reading 'Karrong'; the second 'r' was mistaken for an 'i'.

Geography

Kariong's boundaries include a considerable section of the Brisbane Water National Park to the south, and the Mount Penang Parklands, with its native gardens. Kariong is considered the entry point to the Central Coast as it borders the Pacific Motorway M1. A visitor information centre for the Central Coast is located just off the Central Coast Highway, near the entry to the Mount Penang Parklands.

A "Save Sacred Kariong" anti-development protest, led by Steve Cassar, was established to protect the biome of the endangered plant species Darwinia glaucophylla which occurs nowhere else naturally in the world. Although not solely found at Kariong it is endemic to the Gosford area.

Population

At the 2011 census, Kariong recorded a population of 6,451, a relatively small increase from the figure of 6,285 at the previous census in 2006. Of these:

• The median age was 33 years, compared to the national median of 37 years. Children aged 0–14 years made up 25.3% of the population and people aged 65 years and over made up 8.0% of the population.
• 80.2% of people were born in Australia; the next most common countries of birth were England 5.7%, New Zealand 2.2%, Scotland 0.7%, Philippines 0.5% and South Africa 0.5%.
• 8.1% of employed people travelled to work on public transport and 70.8% by car (either as driver or as passenger).
• 83.5% of households were family households, 14.6% were single person households and 1.9% were group households.

Gosford glyphs

The Gosford glyphs are a group of approximately 300 alleged Egyptian hieroglyphs in an area known for its Aboriginal petroglyphs. They are carved into two parallel sandstone walls about 15 m (49 ft) long. They depict boats, chickens, dogs, owls, stick men, a dog's bone as well as two that appear to be the names of kings, one of them Khufu, the other uncertain. These names are given the same personal name and throne name. There is also a carving of the ancient Egyptian god Anubis. These were first reported in 1975 by Alan Dash, a local surveyor who had been visiting the area for seven years. Dash continued to visit for five years and reported that the number of hieroglyphs had increased every time that he visited.

Since then the hieroglyphs have been claimed by amateur Egyptologists to be authentic script carved by ancient Egyptians about 4,500 years ago, but scholar, Professor Ockinga, said "there are many reasons why they are not accepted as genuine hieroglyphics..."First of all the way they're cut is not the way ancient Egyptian rock inscriptions are produced, they're very disorganised..."There's also a problem with the actual shapes of the signs that are used. There's no way people would've been inscribing texts from the time of Cheops from the signs that weren't invented until 2500 years later." He suggested that the glyphs might have been made in the 1920s by Australian soldiers who had served in Egypt, citing an example of shapes in the form of the Sphinx and a pyramid known to have been made by a returning soldier. Australian Professor of Egyptology Naguib Kanawati has also stated that they are not authentic, saying that the hieroglyphs within the same panels were of widely different periods and some were carved backwards.

Geologists have stated that the sandstone in which the hieroglyphs are carved erodes quickly and nearby 250-year-old Aboriginal Australians petroglyphs show considerably more erosion. In 1983, David Lamber, then a rock art conservator for the National Park Wildlife Service, found some clean cut hieroglyphs which he estimated to be less than twelve months old.

By 2013, the area surrounding the glyphs cleft was declared an Aboriginal Place by the NSW Government.