PVC- Indigenous Strategy UNSWIS_Final_SIGN OFF_18 October 2018 low res for | Page 17

a clear distinction between themselves and those who
lived further inland in western Sydney.
When Aboriginal people set up camp in the dunes,
Aboriginal people most likely slept in bough-framed
shelters, with bark and cabbage tree leaves forming the
roof (fig. 4). It is most likely that they set up camp along
the margins of the swamps rather than on top of the
open dunes, but we have no direct evidence to confirm
this. The swamps would have provided a range of
foods and resources, including fish, eels, tortoise and
reeds for weaving.
spears, barbed hunting spears, wooden clubs and
shields, non-returning boomerangs, ground stone axes,
vessels of wood and bark and woven net bags.
Way of life for coastal Aboriginal tribes around Sydney
changed dramatically with the arrival of the British.
UNSW main campus is situated in a region that was
the epicentre of dispossession. While the nature of the
settlement/invasion of Australia is contested because
the laws of settlement for this time are murky, the first
nations at the national constitutional convention at
Uluru in 2017 decided to label it an “invasion”. British
arrivals fought with the Aboriginal people for territory,
setting up outposts in and around Kensington (fig. 5).
Fig.3 J. Walker, 1791. A Map of the Hitherto explored country
contiguous to Port Jackson. The map was reproduced in Watkin
Tench’s A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson,
State Library of NSW
Sydney’s Aboriginal people were divided into clan
groups of around twenty-five to sixty people, who
traced their lineage through their fathers back to
a common ancestor. They shared totems and had
primary rights to their clan estate. The precise area of
these estates is not known. Fig.4 Augustus Earle, c. 1826. Australian native in his bark hut,
National Library of Australia
We know that the connections of each clan through
marriage and ceremonial obligations linked them to
areas far beyond their individual estate. There were
many languages spoken by Aboriginal people across
coastal Sydney. The surrounding scrub also contained possums, the
skins of which were sewn together by Aboriginal people
to make winter cloaks. Aboriginal people gathered
these foods using implements of wood, stone, bone
and shell, such as fish hooks, multi-pronged fishing
Fig. 5 Landscape in 1870s. John Skinner Prout c.1874 -1876.
View Near Botany Bay, State Library of Victoria
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