Topics: Culture

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1839 - North West - view

“The Australian race” is strictly in the “hunter state” while marvelling at the “ingenuity” of Australian “arts”: ascending trees by making notches, using throwing-sticks as javelins, and using the boomerang as a curving missile

1839 - North West - view

Possum skin cloaks are highly valued

1840s - North Coastal - view

He visits an Aboriginal camp near Camp Cove where “about a dozen natives of the Sydney and Broken Bay tribes were encamped”, and persuades ‘Old Queen Gooseberry’, Bungaree’s widow, to explain to him what she knew of the North Head carvings. She initially objects, saying that these places were ‘koradjee ground’ or ‘priests’ ground’ that she must not visit. After she was encouraged to row across the harbour with them in a whale boat, she “consented at the last to guide us to several spots near the North head, where she said the carvings existed in great numbers, as also impressions of hands upon the sides of high rocks”.

1840 - North West - view

messengers are despatched to gather in distant tribes who light signal-fires on mountain-tops to announce their approach to witness the affair of honor

1840 - North West - view

Aborigines dance on a moonlight night on Threlkeld’s mission on Lake Macquarie. Preparing for the midnight dance around the “mystic ring” lit by numerous fires

1840 - North West - view

Darkinjung, Awabakal and Wonnarua dialects

1841 - North West - view

a “blackfellows corroboree held in a paddock opposite a cottage then owned by Mrs Onus at Richmond”

1842 - North Coastal - view

Descendants today tell of the last recorded corroboree at Chittawai Point. The ashes of the old people were put in the lake.

1842 - North West - view

grand corroboree on Wyong Creek at Tuggerah Lake in honour of the visiting Wollombi “tribe”

1842 - North West - view

Well laden with spoil, we arrived at the blackfellow’s camp shortly before dusk, and were agreeably surprised to find that by the forethought of Long Dick, a separate encampment had been prepared for us. It was built of sheets of bark, tent shape, and lined with dry grass; a log to sit on, and wood for a fire

1842 - North West - view

Some few opossums, bandicoots, snakes and iguanas and other items had been secured by these people during the day; so with the addition of fish and…eggs we had found in the swan nests, there was a bountiful supply of food

1842 - North Coastal - view

John F Mann an early settler on the Central coast, records that ‘Tuggerah’ in Aboriginal language means ‘cold, bleak, exposed’.

1843 - North West - view

At a pre-arranged Aboriginal “corroboree” and ritualised sporting fight attended by around 100 m1843. men, women and children near Maitland to coincide with the settlers’ horse racing contest, one participant who had acquired a musket without sufficient skill in its use, shot an opponent dead by mistake

1843 - North West - view

While tribes throughout the Wollombi district are: “peaceful people, and too few in number to have fights on a grand scale…occasionally a few heads are broken with the coterie, or a spear wound inflicted in retaliation for some breach of their laws or customs

1845 - Central - view

Aboriginal rock carvings

1845 - Central - view

she tells them 'all that she had heard her father say' about the places where 'dibble dibble walk about'

1845 - Central - view

'dibble dibble walk about'

1845 - West - view

Regatta

1845 - West - view

Aboriginal canoes

1845 - South Coastal - view

murah