Aboriginal people of coastal Sydney

Indigenous people living around the coast and estuaries of Sydney spent much of their time fishing .

Updated

23/08/23

This project researched the rich and complex culture of Aboriginal people in the Port Jackson region, revealing continuing importance and connections.

Port Jackson archaeology project

The findings of Australian Museum archaeologist Dr Val Attenbrow's Port Jackson Archaeology Project, and research undertaken for her book published in 2003, Sydney's Aboriginal Past, provide a basis for the material for this webpage.

These sources include: written descriptions, oral histories, drawn and painted illustrations as well as objects collected by the earliest colonists and visitors to Port Jackson in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as well as the archaeological record.

When the British arrived in January 1788, there were more than 1500 Aboriginal people living in the area from Botany Bay to Broken Bay and as far west as Parramatta. They belonged to many clans including the the Gadigal, Wangal, Wallumedegal, Boromedegal, Gamaragal, Borogegal, Birrabirragal and Gayamaygal. They spoke languages now known as Darug, Dharawal. To the south-west Gundungurra and to the north-west of the Hawkesbury River Darginung was spoken.

Fish and fishing were an important part of life although a range of marine and land animals as well as plant foods provided a varied diet for people living near the coast.

Archaeological research on sites such as Aboriginal rock engravings and shell middens* along with the excavated objects and food remains provide a record of the distant past.

Using these sources, it is possible to bring together a picture of the changing life of Aboriginal people in the Sydney region over many thousands of years.

Marine mammals (seals, dugongs, dolphins and whales), sea-birds and possibly turtles were all eaten by Aboriginal people of coastal Sydney.

Marine mammals

Whales, seals and dolphins are regular visitors to Sydney Harbour, particularly between June and October. Whales have been known to beach themselves along the Sydney coastline and in the past people probably kept watch for these events as they enabled large numbers of people to gather and feast.

Dugong bones unearthed at Sheas Creek in St Peters in the 1880s, which have 'cut marks and scars' on their surface, suggest the animal was butchered probably for food.

Seal bones found in coastal shell middens suggest that these animals were probably hunted by Aboriginal people. The small amounts of seal bone recovered in the excavations, however, suggest seal was either not a major food item, or was butchered and/or eaten away from campsites. The bones are probably those of the Australian Fur Seal, Arctocephalus pusillus. Before the mid 1800s, when European hunting killed thousands of seals, numerous colonies extended along the New South Wales coast to just north of Newcastle.

The local name for one of the seals was Wan yea-waur and that for dolphin or 'porpoise' was Bar-ru-wall u-re.

Marine reptiles

Archaeological material from shell middens at Balmoral Beach and Cammeray on Sydney Harbour, suggest that turtles may have been captured and eaten. Turtles, such as the Green Turtle Chelonia mydas, Leatherback Turtle Dermochelys coriacea and the Loggerhead Turtle Caretta caretta, visit Sydney's estuaries but none of them are common visitors.

Birds

Bones found in archaeological sites suggest birds such as Short-tailed Shearwaters Puffinus tenuirostris, also known as muttonbirds, Little Penguins Eudyptula minor, and petrels may have been eaten.

Short-tailed Shearwaters arrive on Australia's east coast in September to breed and stay until January each year. In September they return from the northern hemisphere and large numbers of birds, exhausted from the long flight, wash up on the shore. Such birds may have been a source of food. Their bones were used as points and barbs for prongs of fishing spears.

Aboriginal People of coastal Sydney collected and ate many different types of shellfish and crustaceans.

Shellfish

Among the early historical observation of shellfish being cooked and eaten, and scattered around the huts, there are few descriptions of shellfish collecting. However, the few observations that mention the gender of the collector or carrier of the shellfish indicate men as well as women were involved in collecting shellfish in the Sydney region.

Shellfish were collected by hand from rock platforms as well as the sandy and muddy intertidal shorelines of the coast and estuaries. In Botany Bay Captain Cook saw people were in canoes collecting shellfish by hand from the sand and mud banks in shallow waters.

Oysters (probably both mud and rock oyster, though this is not specifically stated), mussels, cockles and limpets were the only species named. The local names of only a few shellfish were recorded: Dal-gal mussel, Dotang-by a rock oyster, Dainia oyster, and Kah-dien 'the shell on the wo-mar-ra or spearthrower', which could be one of several cockles.

Analysis of the shell species found in excavated shell middens indicate that people living around Sydney Harbour, Botany Bay and Broken Bay, most commonly ate Rock Oysters Saccostrea glomerata, Hairy Mussels Trichomya hirsuta and Sydney Cockles Anadara trapezia. Mud Oysters Ostrea angasi and Hercules Club Whelks Pyrazus ebeninus were also relatively common.

Along the ocean coastlines, there is a greater range of shellfish in the shell middens. Limpets Cellana tramoserica and Black Nerita Nerita atramentosa are the most common species, with Cartrut Dicathais orbita and Turbans Turbo torquata and Turbo undulata and Spengler's Triton Cabestana spengleri being less common.

In shell middens in the lower parts of Sydney Harbour, Botany Bay and Broken Bay, where ocean conditions exist, both estuarine and ocean species are present.

People living along the upper brackish parts of the Georges and Hawkesbury Rivers were reported to have eaten teredinid or Teredo. Although commonly called shipworms they are a shellfish and not a worm. They are also known as cobra, a name from the local Aboriginal name, cah-bro. They are a marine wood-borer which inhabit trees and logs that have fallen into the water and remain submerged, preferably in still water.

After a trip to the Hawkesbury River (Richmond Hill) in 1790s, Judge Advocate David Collins wrote that a man left;

'behind him a specimen of his food and the delicacy of his stomach; a piece of water-soaked wood (part of the branch of a tree) full of holes, the lodgment of a large worm, named by them cah-bro, and which they extract and eat' (Collins 1798[1975]:462)

Collins continued with reference to groups living on the Georges River:

'There is a tribe of natives dwelling inland, who, from the circumstance of their eating these loathsome worms, are named Cah-bro-gal.'

The present-day Sydney suburb Cabramatta is named after this area.

Crustaceans

Blue Swimmer Crabs Portunus pelagius, Mud Crabs Scylla serrata, Soldier Crabs, Spiny Lobsters or Sea-crayfish Jasus verreauxi, Eastern King Prawn Penaeus plebejus, Eastern School Prawn Metapenaeus maclyeayi and rock barnacles such as the large 'purple plated' Austrobalanus imperator are common in Sydney Harbour. The only crustaceans reported by the colonists to have been eaten were crayfish, which were caught in Port Jackson with small hoop nets. There is no mention at all of prawns, crabs or barnacles being caught or eaten, though the name for crabs, Ke-ra, was recorded.

Archaeological excavations have recovered only small amounts of crab and crayfish remains. The fragility of the exoskeletons, which do not survive well in archaeological deposits, probably explains why only small amounts are found. Barnacles occur in middens, but they may not have been collected for food as they often attached themselves to other shellfish that were eaten.