Topics: Culture

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1791 - North Coastal - view

On an expedition to the Hawkesbury River with Colbee, Marine Captain Watkin Tench notes that the dialect of the sea coast is also spoken at Parramatta.

1791 - North Coastal - view

David Collins identifies the north shore clan as Cameragal, “by far the most numerous. … most robust and muscular”. They officiate in ceremonies for many clans, in which the boy’s front upper tooth is knocked out”. Collins notes that the Cameragal had the best fishing spots around the harbour, North Head, Middle Head and the Spit. (Collins 1975)

1791 - North Coastal - view

Tench observes language differences: “Although our natives (in Sydney) and the strangers (Hawkesbury River) conversed on a par and understood each other perfectly, yet they spoke different dialects of the same language”. (Tench 1996)

1791 - West - view

Koradji (special or clever men and women who had great cultural and spiritual knowledge and skill)

1791 - North West - view

“inland language” is different to the “coastal language”

1791 - North West - view

a boy carrying a torch of flaming tea tree bark

1791 - Central - view

dances or corroborees

1795 - Central - view

removing a front tooth in young men ceremony

1795 - Central - view

corrobories

1795 - North Coastal - view

Cameragal elders officiate at the Erah-ba-diang intitiation ceremony at Wogganmagully (Farm Cove).

1796 - North Coastal - view

Fishermen shipwrecked in Broken Bay are welcomed by Koories, fed and shown the way back to Port Jackson. They arrive back with a story that a white woman is living “amongst the blacks”. A volunteer boat returns to the Bay but finds no evidence.

1796 - North Coastal - view

Koori people are “beginning to annoy the settlers” on the Hawkesbury, John Lacy operating a passenger boat from Sydney to the Hawkesbury is killed. Governor Hunter asks settlers to “mutually afford assistance to each other by assembling when ever any numerous body of the natives are known to be lurking about”. (HRNSW vol 3, p. 26)

1796 - North Coastal - view

“The settlers of the northern farms have frequently lost clothing and provisions as a result of the Aborigines. The settlers armed themselves and in the fight, five Aborigines were killed.” (Collins 1971 vol 2, p. 27). “The Aboriginal people were no longer the object of pity or cruel amusement … the murder of Aboriginal men was justified on the grounds that the Aborigines were treacherous, evil minded, blood thirsty set of men”. (Clark 1962, p. 145 quoted in Morris 1978). By the end of the first Hawkesbury conflict it is unofficially not always regarded as murder to carry out indiscriminate killing of Aboriginal men, women or children by settlers or by government punitive expeditions. Many colonists believe that they should not be prosecuted for protecting their crops.

1800 - South West - view

ceremonial site

1801 - North West - view

“The lobsters were caught by the women who, in the sea front dived down among the rocks for them”

1802 - West - view

religious terror

1802 - West - view

evil spirit

1802 - West - view

group hunting

1802 - West - view

hunt the kangaroo

1805 - West - view

punishment trial