1820s

1820

People travel from the Illawarra and the Hunter Valley in the north, merging on the Brickfields to mingle with the clans as well as the colonists. (Karskens p. 441)

North Rocks (also known as the Rocks of Jerusalem) are a gigantic crop of sandstone on Hunts Creek not far from the present Kings School. The area becomes a retreat of Aboriginal resistance fighters and secluded living area.

1821

A white woman in a relationship with an Aboriginal man is branded a prostitute. (Brook, p. 7)

A map of Sydney showing the areas of settlement, following the fertile and arable soils, look like little islands in a sea of infertile sandstone.

Two couples in the Blacktown Native Institution marry. The missionaries’ plan is to encourage the boys and the girls from the institution to marry each other, and will then form a nucleus of stable Europeanised Aboriginal settlers.

1824

Bungaree hosts a ‘Great Gathering’ of tribes near Sydney Cove at which Koori people from Liverpool, Windsor, Emu Plains, the Hunter River, and the Five Islands at Wollongong attend. (For information on Bungaree, see the ‘North Coastal’ part of this website.)

Most of the survivors and remnants of the Sydney peoples, and the Koori immigrants, have gathered into the ‘Sydney Tribe’. Those from areas north of Sydney tend to gather and settle on the north side of the harbour, while those from the south are settling at Circular Quay or Botany.

1825

Musquito, originally a Gai-mariagal man well known throughout Sydney, is hanged in Hobart Town Jail.

Barron Field writes of the ‘Sydney tribe’: ‘They bear themselves erect, and address you with confidence, all those in good humour, have often good dress. They are not common beggars, although they accept our kind of things in return for fish and oysters, which are almost all we have left them for their support. They are … the carriers of news and fish; the gossips of the town; the loungers on the quay. They know everybody; and understand the nature of everybody’s business, although they have none of their own – of this… They have bowing acquaintances with everybody, and scatter their ‘however you do’s’ with an air of friendliness and equality, and with a perfect English accent, underbased by the ‘Massas’ (Masters) and Missies and me-nos of West Indian Slavery’. (Karskens, p. 432)

1827

Pigeon, a well known Sydney Koori, is sealing at King George Sound in South West Western Australia (for more, see Stories )

William Alannam writes to George Augustus Robinson, I am a native of New Holland near to Botany Bay. Native man Bugerygoory (alias William) … I was young when I left my tribe, I am now about twenty five years old. I have been employed in a whaling ship, on my return I joined the blacks, after some time I joined a sealing vessel out of Sydney and remained sealing about five years during which time I couldn’t get any money but was supplied occasionally with spirits in lieu thereof.” (Vincent Smith p. 155)

1828

The tank stream is abandoned as Sydney’s drinking water supply, mainly because of pollution. At one time it entered the sea at the junction of Alfred and Pitt Streets, near Bridge Street.