Cirrus@Austlit

'The first sailing ships that entered the world of the Indigenous people of Botany Bay and Port Jackson caused fear and wonder. '

'They thought they were giant birds, monsters, or floating islands and that the figures climbing the masts were devils or possums.'

'This book reveals the significant role Aboriginal men, and some women, played in Australia’s early maritime history. Its focus is the Indigenous people who sailed on English ships through Port Jackson to destinations throughout the world in the period 1790-1850...' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

'Woollarawarre Bennelong (c1764-1813) was the most significant Indigenous man in early Sydney and also, in retrospect, the most misrepresented and underestimated. He was one of the first to face the dilemma of knowing two cultures. In the end he chose his own.

Bennelong did not fade into obscurity in the second part of his life after his return from England in 1795. He resumed a traditional Aboriginal lifestyle, regained authority as a leader, remarried and had a son. He died at the age of 50 as a respected elder mourned by his people.

This article is based on a careful examination and unravelling of records compiled by the British officers of the 'First Fleet', whose journals, diaries, language notebooks, official despatches, private letters and printed histories still survive. As Marcia Langton remarked: 'These officers were the first British ethnologists, whatever their purposes and whatever their prejudices.'1 Whatever their motives, these observers wrote down what they saw with their own eyes and what they were told by their Indigenous informants, principally Bennelong.' Source: Keith Vincent Smith.

The work of English marine officer William Dawes (1762 - 1836) and surgeon-explorer George Bass (1771-1803) recording indigenous language.

'This booklet looks at the indigenous history of the Sydney suburb of Ryde. The Wallumedegal people were the traditional owners and were for generations fisher-hunter-gatherers in a rich environment of river flats , mangrove swamps and creeks.' (Source: TROVE)

'Biography of Bennelong (c1764-1813), a Sydney Aboriginal man who was kidnapped by Governor Phillip in 1789 and subsequently lived within both the European and Aboriginal cultures. Reveals Bennelong as a clever politician playing a double game between his people and Phillip. Recounts his leadership of a resistance movement against the European invaders, culminating in an unwritten peace 'treaty' in 1790.' (Source: Angus & Robertson website)