It may surprise some people that ancient Celtic rock inscriptions exist in Australia. Yet thier ogham script has been found at many remote sites around the earth. Celtic inscriptions dating from the 1st millennium BC {about the time they joined Phoenicians on mining expeditions to Australia}exist upon rocks in the north-eastern United States and elsewhere in the Americas, as well as on some west Pacific islands including New Zealand.

As we have already seen, their ogham script has been found at many copper, tin and gold-bearing sites in eastern Australia. These give the name of individuals, thier gods and goddesses; as well as the names of their colonies. They built crude dwellings, shrines and temples long since turned to rubble. They dedicated a hill deep in the Moombi range of New England district {northern NSW} to the god Bel; a place of joyous festivities and bloody sacrifices.

They were the descendants of the Uru migrants who had spread across the Old World. The homeland of the Uru, the lost Paradise of Mankind, they settled, mined and then sailed on towards the sunrise, forever in search of new lands. The maritime history of the Celts has been strangely neglected by European historians and archaeologists, whose university-indoctrinated dogma teaches that world exploration only began in the 15th century, with the voyages of Portuguese and Spanish adventurers...

The skepticism of Australian academics on the subject is only to be expected, for they are confined to the old, traditional story, that Captain James Cook RN 'discovered our east coast in 1770, although the Dutch explorer, William Jansz 'discovered Australia by landing on the west coast of Cape York, Queensland in 1606. Scholarly research of more enlightened minds has, however, long ago dismissed this pretty poetry.

While showing Celtic ogham inscribed stones to a high school teacher at my museum one day, his skeptical reply was "I never knew the Celts were even seafarers, and I can't imagine them being able to make long sea voyages to Australia. The fact is, most people still see the Celts as they were taught at school, as mostly naked savages, with primitive river craft no better than one-man coracles. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

These people made woven garments and jewellery, and were workers in metal, and they were most certainly highly-skilled ship builders and navigators more than capable of cross-ocean voyages. Their warships alone, towered over those of the Romans as Julius Caesar discovered when he fought {and very nearly lost} his greatest naval battle in the summer of 55 BC, when his fleet of large 200 man-carrying tiremes commanded by Admiral Brutus, met a Celtic fleet off the estuary of the Loire.

The battle nearly went to the Celts, who were re-enforced by the arrival of a fleet of huge warships from Britannia. No detailed picture of Celtic warship or other ocean-going vessel is at present known, though their warships height allowed the Celts troops to hurl their spears and shot their arrows down at their adversaries.

The Celtic vessels were described as high-prowed and graceful in appearance, their flat keels making them manoeuvrable in shallow waters.

They had tall masts with big sails sewn from beaten hides, making them more serviceable in bad storms than the Egyptian manufactured linen of the Roman sails. The Celtic ships were propelled entirely by the wind, and the Celtic captains were without equal in the harnessing of air currents.

Therefore, unlike the Romans, Celtic captains did not bother with oarsmen. Had the wind not dropped, leaving the Celtic fleet without any means of propulsion, Caesar would surely have lost the battle.

The Roman tiremes and biremes were deep keeled and helpless in shallow waters. Knowing themselves to be poor sailors, and remembering their beating by the Carthaginians during the Punic wars, they had since invented the grapling iron, by which means an enemy could be held in place, boarded and captured.

Thus the Roman troops were soon able to board their enemies' vessels to employ their speciality, hand to hand combat. The entire Celtic fleet was destroyed and Caesar with 80 warships, later in September 55 BC carried the war across the Channel to Britannia.