Revealing the diversity of Aboriginal life in the Sydney region, this study examines a variety of source documents that discuss not only Aboriginal life before colonization in 1788 but also the early years of first contact. This is the only work to explore the minutiae of Sydney Aboriginal daily life, detailing the food they ate; the tools, weapons, and equipment they used; and the beliefs, ceremonial life, and rituals they practiced. This updated edition has been revised to include recent discoveries and the analyses of the past seven years, adding yet more value to this 2004 winner of the John Mulvaney award for best archaeology book from the Australian Archaeological Association. The inclusion of a special supplement that details the important sites in the Sydney region and how to access them makes the book especially appealing to those interested in visiting the sites.
The popular first edition established itself as both authoritative and informative; it is both a guide book and an alternative social history, told through precincts of significance to the city’s Indigenous people. The sites within the precincts, and their accompanying stories and photographs, evoke Sydney’s ancient past, and allow us all to celebrate the living Aboriginal culture of today. Now available as a phone app from iTunes or Google Play: http://bit.ly/16s9zI0
We started swimming in the Georges River at Liverpool. We were river girls! It was our little stamping ground. - Judy Chester Rivers and Resilience traces the history of Aboriginal people along Sydney's Georges River from the early periods of white settlement to the present. Telling the stories of the river people, it offers insights into Aboriginal history in an urban setting. For centuries Aboriginal people lived along the Georges River. With colonisation, the river's geography forced settlers to leapfrog over its rugged and swampy bends in search of arable land. Aboriginal people retained a hold over some of the land and maintained communities - despite changes caused by the city's growth. Two leading historians investigate Aboriginal communities in this densely settled, but often overlooked, suburban area.
The Sydney Wars tells the history of military engagements between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians – described as ‘this constant sort of war’ by one early colonist – around the greater Sydney region. Telling the story of the first years of colonial Sydney in a new and original way, this provocative book is the first detailed account of the warfare that occurred across the Sydney region from the arrival of a British expedition in 1788 to the last recorded conflict in the area in 1817. The Sydney Wars sheds new light on how British and Aboriginal forces developed military tactics and how the violence played out. Analysing the paramilitary roles of settlers and convicts and the militia defensive systems that were deployed, it shows that white settlers lived in fear, while Indigenous people fought back as their land and resources were taken away. Stephen Gapps details the violent conflict that formed part of a long period of colonial strategic efforts to secure the Sydney basin and, in time, the rest of the continent. ‘A powerful and cogent contribution to one of the most contentious aspects of Australian history: the war between British settlers and the First Nations. The fine detailed research will mean that we will have to radically reassess our understanding of the history of the first thirty years of settlement.’ —Henry Reynolds
Aboriginal people are prominent in accounts of early colonial Sydney, yet we seem to skip a century as they disappear from the historical record and re-emerge in early in the twentieth century. Paul Irish's Hidden in Plain View explores what happened in the interim. How did Indigenous people come to be ignored in colonial narratives? In this original and important book, he brings this poorly understood period of Sydney's Aboriginal history back into focus. Irish tells the compelling story of the Aboriginal presence in the heart of Sydney during the nineteenth century and reveals the complex relationship between Aboriginal people and the growth of Sydney. He shows that Aboriginal people were not pushed out of the way by urban expansion and charts how they developed cross-cultural relationships and established links with the settler economy. Hidden in Plain View reminds us that Aboriginal people have always been part of the physical and historical fabric of Sydney.
The vast continent of Australia was settled in two main streams, far apart in time and origin. The first came ashore some 50,000 years ago when the islands of Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea were one. The second began to arrive from Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. Each had to come to terms with the land they found, and each had to make sense of the other. The long Aboriginal occupation of Australia witnessed spectacular changes. The rising of the seas isolated the continent and preserved a nomadic way of life, while agriculture was revolutionising other parts of the world. Over millennia, the Aboriginal people mastered the land's climates, seasons and resources. Traditional Aboriginal life came under threat the moment Europeans crossed the world to plant a new society in an unknown land. That land in turn rewarded, tricked, tantalised and often defeated the new arrivals. The meeting of the two cultures is one of the most difficult and complex meetings in recorded history. In this book Professor Geoffrey Blainey returns first to the subject of his celebrated works on Australian history, Triumph of the Nomads (1975) and A Land Half Won (1980), retelling the story of our history up until 1850 in light of the latest research. He has changed his view about vital aspects of the Indigenous and early British history of this land, and looked at other aspects for the first time. Compelling, groundbreaking and brilliantly readable, The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia is the first instalment of an ambitious two-part work, and the culmination of the lifework of Australia's most prolific and wide-ranging historian. 'Absorbing and important ... the first volume of an ambitious work on the peopling of this continent from its human origins to our own day...bold, rich, wise, authioritative and questioning.' Peter Stanley, The Age 'The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Australia situates pre-invasion Aboriginal society as a triumphant culture with much to celebrate.' John Maynard, The Age 'Blainey has produced a book that all Australians could and, dare I say it, should read . . . I very much look forward to the next instalment of his bold, rich, wise, wry, authoritative and questioning trilogy.' Canberra Times 'This is the real story of Australia, at last.' Courier Mail 'Blainey delivers a brilliant narrative on Australia's settlement.' Australian Geographic
Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing - behaviors inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.
Contrary to what you may think, local Aboriginal people did not lose their culture and die out within decades of Governor Phillip's arrival in Sydney in 1788. Aboriginal people are prominent in accounts of early colonial Sydney, yet we seem to skip a century as they disappear from the historical record, re-emerging early in the twentieth century. What happened to Sydney's indigenous people between the devastating impact of white settlement and increased government intervention a century later? Hidden in Plain View shows that Aboriginal people did not disappear. They may have been ignored in colonial narratives but maintained a strong bond with the coast and its resources and tried to live on their own terms. This original and important book tells this powerful story through individuals, and brings a poorly understood period of Sydney's shared history back into view. Its readers will never look at Sydney in the same way.
DESTINY IN SYDNEY is an epic, multicultural novel of convicts, Aborigines, and Chinese embroiled in the birth of Sydney, Australia. Adventurous and opportunistic, Scottish marine Lieutenant Nathaniel Armstrong is in charge of convicts on one of eleven ships sent in 1787 on a perilous voyage from England to the other side of the world to establish a British penal colony. He lusts after fiery Irish convict Moira O Keeffe and surprises himself when he falls in love with her. Together they nearly starve in Sydney Cove while learning to farm the harsh land and deal with the Aborigines, whose lot is disease and unequal warfare. Armstrong descendants deny their convict heritage and oppose the Chinese who come for the gold rush. Three Fong brothers suffer violence and despair as they fight to forge a place for themselves. Duncan Armstrong, rich and powerful, helps pass the White Australia Policy in 1901 to keep out the Chinese, while his cousin Eleanor works for women s suffrage and a fair go for the Aborigines. Impeccably researched, this gripping dramatization of the true history of Sydney, Australia, is drawn from the writings of Australian leaders, soldiers, explorers, and settlers. Richards has mined Australian history for its action-adventure and applied his incomparable storytelling skills for a powerful, fast-paced read. The sequel novel A GIFT OF SYDNEY, available in late 2013, will continue the story of the Armstrongs and Fongs, and add the Hudson Aboriginal family, ending with the Summer Olympic Games held in Sydney in the year 2000.
