The historian Grace Karskens writes, ‘In this book the narratives of town-building, rural settlements and environmental responses are encircled by histories of the Aboriginal people of Sydney. Of all the rich and gripping stories of what happened in the Sydney region after 1788, these are the most astonishing and the most poignant. It is time to shake off the idea that Sydney was a “white” city, that Aboriginal people simply faded out of the picture and off the “stage of history”; it is simply untrue. The time has come, too, to recognise that Aboriginal people became urban people very quickly.’ Karskens, The Colony, p. 12.