1890s

16 Koorie's sign a petition asking for land: “We, the native blacks about Sydney, ask you if you would be kind enough to give us a piece of land at Jervis Bay, where we can make a home for our selves and our people. We have been hunted about a good deal from one place to another, and we find it hard to get a living for ourselves and our children, but if we get a chance and some help from the government we might in time get a living. As it is we find it very hard. Drink and a hard life are killing us off. White people ought to be very good to us for they got our good country for nothing. We don’t want them to pay us for it, but they ought to help us to live. We would like our boys and girls to learn to read and write like white children and we want boats and nets for fishing, so we can get money for our work and learn to live like Christians.” Goodall, Invasion to Embassy, pp. 82-83.

Australian Town and Country Journal (NSW: 1870 - 1907) 29 March p 18: “ Tommy Ryan, the notorious Aboriginal, was brought up at the Water Police Court, Sydney.

Lucy Leane nee Burns has a petition written to the Aboriginal protection Board about her by local settlers. They request that Lucy receive a boat to go fishing as “she is one of the last Natives…. ‘

78 people are listed as living at ‘Windsor’, 33 adults and 45 children (NSW Aboriginal Protection Board Report, 1889, p.6) ‘One pair of oars’ is supplied at Sackville Reach. ‘The men as a rule are employed on farms during the spring and harvest. Six children attend the Sackville Reach Public School; all the community is supplied with blankets, one per year. ‘They are not addicted to habits of intemperance. On the contrary, they are very temperate’. (p. 7)

In the Nepean district (Penrith) reside 8 adults. In ‘Central Cumberland’ (Parramatta and Liverpool) there are 15, most of whom ‘live on a farm at Holdsworthy’. (NSW Aboriginal Protection Board Report, 1891, p.8

The Gully at Katoomba is becoming a place where families can sometimes escape the attention of the Aborigines Protection Board particularly if they need to get away from Plumpton, close to the old Blacktown reserve. The Gully stands at the confluence of many tracks over the mountains in different directions to the Megalong and Burragorang Valleys. These are the track off Narrow Neck through the Devil’s Hole, the track through Megalong Cleft or Nellie’s Glen near Katoomba, the track off the end of Narrow Neck over Clear Hill and a track behind the Hydro Majestic Hotel at Medlow Bath.

The census lists the population figures at Windsor, Penrith and Parramatta and Liverpool as follows: Windsor, total of 91 Aborigines, comprising 14 “full bloods” and 17 “half-castes”,’ the majority employed on farms during the spring and harvest’. Brook, pp. 8-9.

The hall at Black Town, Freemans Reach which is used by the Congregational Church has been enlarged and is now capable of holding 150 persons. (WRG 18 June 1892 p. 3)

Robert Locke donates land for a mission at Plumpton, very close to the site of the Blacktown Institute. Australian Inland Mission missionaries erect a church there. (J.L.Kohen, The Darug and their Neighbours, Darug Link, 1993, p. 15) By1911 the area is being referred to as a reserve.

Windsor: “An Aboriginal named Billy Thomas, at the Water Police Court, Windsor last Saturday is charged for drunk and disorderly conduct .” ANL Trove: Windsor and Richmond Gazette

67 Koori people are listed as living at Windsor, and 51 at Penrith. (NSW Aboriginal Protection Board Report, 1892, pp.8-9)

Windsor and Richmond Gazette, page 6. “The brothers Thomas and William Onus (both now deceased) were also prominent figures in the cricket field in those days. They were both very tall men and excellent all-round cricketers.”

Windsor and Richmond Gazette page 5: Windsor Court hears case against Henry Barber. “Henry Barber, an Aboriginal, was called, and in reply to the Bench said that he could read and had been in Court before; he had had a good deal of experience in stripping wattle-bark: the bark sold to defendant was in good condition.”

Many men in the Sackville region are working at the Tizzana Winery. Others, including Billy Lynch, work at the newly opened shale oil mine at Nellie’s Glen, near Katoomba. Billy Lynch writes, “I don’t know, but I suppose that the time for my people to be replaced by another has come, and so all the animals, and the fruits, and birds they depended on vanished. It is not the shooting. There is not enough of that to account for it. It is just that their time has come too.”

page 6 Windsor and Richmond Gazette. “The brothers Thomas and William Onus (both now deceased) were also prominent figures in the cricket field in those days. They were both very tall men and excellent all-round cricketers.”

Aboriginal persons listed living at Parramatta, 61 at Windsor and 36 at Penrith. Aboriginal Protection Board Report, pp. 5-6)

One of the Sackville Reach reserves is revoked. 99 people live in Windsor. Aboriginal Protection Board Report, 1896)

Land at Wilberforce is set aside for Aboriginal people to live on. It is from Stannix Park road to Sargents Road west, north of Currency Creek. Little use is made of the land, however, as it is not close to the river.

Windsor Court house is site of blanket distribution.

Birth of William Castles.

Reference to the poor state of the road from Gorricks Hill to Windsor through Blacktown. (WRG 31 July 1897 p 7)

The Aborigines Protection Board Annual Census confirms 21 residents in Katoomba. A reserve in the Megalong Valley is gazetted.

The closure of the Nellie’s Glen shale oil mine causes several men and their families to move to Katoomba. (Australian Dictionary of Biography, ‘Billy Lynch’, Supplement, 2005)

Birth of Annie Alice May Stubbings, she later marries David Morgan in 1916.

Maria Locke is living at Field of Mars on Lane Cove river. It is almost as remote from day to day interference as Sackville. Many Koories live at Marsfield, which has plentiful mud oysters, fish and crabs, amongst Mangroves and used by the non Aboriginal people nearby only as a launching jetty.

Windsor and Richmond Gazette: page 6. A report received from the police at Windsor concerning the death of the oldest Aboriginal in the Hawkesbury district, and enclosing an account of the funeral expenses which were undertaken by the Board. ‘The deceased was locally known as Jimmy Cox, and was stated to have been a full-blooded Aboriginal, and was a native of the district in which he died at the patriarchal age of 75 years. He had been in failing health for the previous twelve months, and was troubled with a difficulty in breathing. Jimmy, had been for a long time in receipt of rations from the Board.’

Death of Jane Lock, father David Lock.

The Aboriginal Protection Board is supplying rations to some of the families living on the Plumpton Reserve including those of Charles Locke. Other families include Stubbings, Charles, Locke, Shaw and Anslick. Johnson, p. 146.

Arthur Bartle is born in 1869 at Eastern Creek, a descendant of Matora Bungaree, he joins the Australian Light Horse Brigade and serves in the Boer war. Arthur is the son of Mary Ann Bartle nee Thomas.