Some settlers are becoming nostalgic about the years of first settlement. William Cox Jr writes ‘I can myself remember seeing [locally made ground-edge axes] them in the hands of the greater number of the natives of the tribes which once inhabited the Valley of Mulgoa near Penrith; but so thoroughly has all trace of them now disappeared that I have searched that district in vain for specimens peculiar to the tribe, and if the total disappearance of them has taken place within the last thirty-five years, I think, unless some record of these rude relics on the inhabitants of this land be made, future generations may doubt their ever having existed at all. (quoted in M. Martin, On Darug Land. An Aboriginal Perspective, Greater Western Education Centre, 1988, p. 8)