Red Hands Shelter with Art, Resolute Trail, West Head, KCNP

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At the Resolute Picnic Area,  the Red Hands Walk takes you to two side-by-side sandstone rock shelters which contain several red hand stencils, some of which appear to be made by children. The stencils are weathered and affected by previous fires in the area, they are fading and hard to see and it therefore takes a little time to focus on where they are.  Although there are many hundreds of shelters with art in them within the Ku-ring-gai GeoRegion, very few are as accessible as this site. There is another small shelter with art site nearby, known as the Little Hands site (photo included).

The Red Hands Shelter, West Head, KCNP.

One of several but faded red hand stencils in the Red Hands Shelter at West Head, KCNP.

Faded artwork sometimes requires colour enhancement (e.g.DStretch) to highlight the weathered motifs, as shown in these two photos of the same area in the Red Hand Shelter at West Head. Some of the stencilled handprints in this photo are circled, you may be able to distinguish others. The occurrence of a dyke nearby, may have been the source for the red ochre used in the preparation of the stencilling medium.

The ‘Little Hands’ art site, also at West Head and only a few hundred meters from the Red Hands Shelter, contains various stencilled objects and red hand stencils, some of which may have been made by children.