PVC- Indigenous Strategy UNSWIS_Final_SIGN OFF_18 October 2018 low res for | Page 16

Aboriginal History of the Main UNSW Campus
As part of the UNSW 2025 Strategy, the university
engaged historian Paul Irish, author of Hidden In
Plain View: The Aboriginal People of Coastal Sydney
(NewSouth Publishing), to provide a historical and
anthropological history of UNSW.
The following draws upon that report, but also frames
the history according to a timeline, or phases, of
Australian history that help us to understand the
impact of laws and policies upon the lives of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander peoples since first contact.
A timeline of Aboriginal occupation of the area
encompassing UNSW consists of the following
sequential phases: Pre-contact; First contact and
Invasion; Conciliation; Frontier Wars; Compulsory
Racial Segregation; Assimilation; Self-determination;
Post self-determination. It is important to note here that
the Uluru Statement from the Heart resolutely refers to
the arrival of the British as an invasion.
The UNSW Kensington Campus is a veneer built on
top of an ancient landscape of high sand dunes and
swampy swales. You can feel this topography as you
walk east across the campus from ANZAC Parade, or
drive up High or Barker Streets, climbing the western
side of one of these tall dunes. They are tens of
thousands of years old and many metres deep.
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When they were formed the world was in the middle
of the last ice age. There was no ice in Sydney, but
temperatures were cooler and sea levels were
Cooks River
Alexandra Canal
dugong
6,000 years old
Wolli Creek campsite
10,500 years old
Kensington
Campus
Hearth
8,500 years old
Georges River
2km
Fig.1 The landscape c.20,000 years ago and some
early Aboriginal places Fig.2 Hearth approx. 8,500 years old
much lower, leaving the coast many kilometres further
east than today. Botany Bay did not yet exist (fig. 1). to make canoes, shields and containers. Stone points
were used to cut, incise and drill as part of hafted
implements, and were also mounted on spears as
barbs. None of the stone raw materials for these
implements are found in the sand dunes or sandstone
outcrops of the coast, so we know that coastal Sydney
people were trading with other groups in western
Sydney, south in the Illawarra and much further away
An excavation near the site of Prince of Wales Hospital
uncovered an Aboriginal hearth approximately 8,500
years old (fig. 2). Aboriginal people continued to live
in coastal Sydney in the millennia since the Prince of
Wales Hospital hearth was used, and their way of life
changed considerably over that time. We can sense this
just by looking at the new technologies they adopted.
By around 4,000 years ago, Aboriginal people in
Sydney began to use ground stone axes (hatchets),
and small stone points became very common. Hafted
hatchets were used to cut toeholds in trees to climb
them in search of possums or honey, and to cut bark
Around 1,500 years ago, coastal Sydney people began
to use local materials for their tools, such as shell,
bone and quartz from coastal sandstone.
About 1,000 years ago, they began to make fish hooks
from shell, which were mainly used by women. When
Europeans arrived (fig.3), coastal Sydney people drew