Topics: Sites: North Coastal

At Christmas time Aboriginal people come in large numbers to camp at Cremorne Reserve in Cameragal country. They receive the annual gift of a blanket each, given by the government.

Corroborees held at Manly on the site of several churches above Careening Cove.

Manly carrier RJ Wild claims to have witnessed the last Aboriginal corroboree in Manly held on vacant land near St Matthew’s Church on the Corso in the late 1870s.

Mrs O’Shanessy, a daughter of ferry engineer Robert Grant recalls “Where the Catholic Church now stands in Whistler Street there was an aboriginal camp that was nearly always occupied by a tribe of the coastal blacks, then an everyday feature of Manly’s life.”

He is buried at Kincumber Churchyard where a stone bears tribute “respected by all”.

Aboriginal Reserve is established at Sackville in upper reaches of the Hawkesbury River. Many Aboriginal families move there and worked on Dr Fiashi’s vineyard at Tizzana. Many languages are spoken at the reserve, including Daruk, Guringai and Darkinyung  

At a meeting of Manly Council on 10 June 1899, reference made to the naming of what has become known as Little Manly Point. Alderman Charles Tucker states that a letter from George Thornton, Chairman of the Aborigines Protection Board, suggested that this point of land should retain the original name by which it was known to the local tribe. This tribe was the remnant of a former large tribe, and its members regarded this point of land, on which were their “gibbah gunyahs”, as their living area. They knew it as ‘Kihimatta’, which in their local dialect meant a “sign of sleeping places”.

Numbers of Aboriginal people at Sackville Reserve are diminishing. By the 1930s only one person remains. Many descendants now live around Blacktown.

Father Browne, a Jesuit priest, visits people whom he identifies as ‘Aborigines’ at Middle Harbour, Spit and publishes two photographs. The site is probably Quakers Hat Bay, near the Spit.