1790s

Gnung-agung-a, adopting the name Collins travels to Hawaii and North America in 1793. He also helps the settlers look for their missing cattle, missing since the landing of the first fleet in 1798. He dies in 1809. (Vincent Smith pp. 89-90)

Barangaroo (Bennelong’s wife) often visits Government House and is a notable Sydney identity. (Karskens, pp. 400-401)

Barangaroo gives birth to a baby girl Dilboong, who dies shortly afterwards. Bennelong buries her ashes in the garden of Government House, Circular Quay, and asks Phillip to act as a foster father to the child Dilboong. (Karskens, pp. 464-467)

Bennelong is visiting London. The London Oracle reports of him that 'Bennelong, a very merry fellow, regrets nothing so much as the inconvenience he finds in the absence of his three wives, for whom he had not yet been able to find a substitute in this country’. (Vincent Smith p. 25)

McIntyre, the Governor’s gamekeeper, is speared by Pemulwuy, a powerful warrior of the Bidgigal people. Phillip orders a revenge expedition to catch the culprits. They march to Botany Bay, with orders to bring back two men to be executed and the heads of ten more. The Botany Bay people are targeted because Bennelong has suggested that Pemulwuy comes from this area but more probably Pemulwuy’s people are the Bidgigal, the ‘woods tribe’ of the inland Georges River area. A party of fifty soldiers heads to Botany Bay but lose their way in the swamps. They find Coleby who tells them that Pemulwuy has fled long ago to the south. Following the failure of this expedition Phillip sends out another party in December. (Karskens, pp. 392-395)

Until the 1820s, Sydney Koori people stage big fights or dances probably in an area known as the Brickfields, probably near the southern end of what becomes Hyde Park near Liverpool St, that is, the site of the Sydney War Memorial. Fights are also held until at least 1795 at Pannerong, later called Rose Bay. By 1795 other Koori people are coming from ‘the woods’ in western Sydney and from great distances inland. (Karskens p. 441-3)

Women line-fish from small canoes while the men fish with spears and usually on shore. Early colonists and later anthropologists agree that most of the food is gathered by women. Fish and shellfish from the waters, small animals and lizards, and the winter food of fern roots from the ground cleared by summertime burning. For men, the procuring of food really seems to observers, to be of secondary importance to the real business of the day, fighting and contests. Women generally cook the food and share it with small children and babies aboard their canoes. (Karskens, pp. 405-406)

Daniel Moowattin, born in Parramatta, becomes a guide to the botanist George Caley. In 1810 he travels to London. (Vincent Smith p. 118)

Bennelong and Yemmerrewanne leave Sydney for England with Phillip.

Bennelong returns and by 1797, has been married and has at least one more child, named Dicky. He regains his former authority and is regarded as ‘King of the Natives in the Kissing Point - Eastwood area.’ He officiates in one of the last recorded corrobories in the harbour in 1797. (Karskens, pp. 422-423)

Tristan, living with the Reverend Samuel Marsden, sails to Norfolk Island. He learns to read and write and travels with Marsden to Rio Di Janeiro in 1807. Shortly after arriving in Sydney he dies and is buried in the old church yard, now the site of the Sydney Town Hall. (Vincent Smith p. 85)