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Radiocarbon dating of archaeological material at significant enough for Carradah to ‘exchange’ names of the city. Indigenous people were employed as and adopt the title Mr Ball for himself. He may well gardeners and grooms on the larger estates of North present-day Cammeray indicates that Aboriginal have assisted European exploration of north shore Sydney. people were living in the North Sydney area at areas. Balls Head was named in the Englishman’s The physical evidence of the first inhabitants of the least 5,800 years ago. By this time the last ice age honour. The Aboriginal name for the area was North Shore can be found in fire-charred caves, apparently not recorded. had ended and water levels had risen to create stencilled hands painted on stone, engravings of Sydney Harbour and its river valleys. The Barangaroo was also identified as a Cammeraygal animals and weapons on rocks, and middens of landforms and waterways familiar to these people woman in these early accounts. She was a wife of the whitened seashells from thousands of meals. Wongal man Bennelong and a strong willed figure would have differed little from those that Balls Head has some of the most significant who did not approve of her husband’s consorting with remaining Aboriginal sites in North Sydney. The European colonists first encountered in 1788. the interloping Europeans. Australian Museum investigated a rock shelter at Then, the North Shore of Sydney was inhabited by By the early 1800s Aboriginal social structures had Balls Head in 1964 and 1971 where the skeleton of the Cammeraygal (Gameraigal) clan or band. Their been dramatically affected by dispersal and disease, a female was discovered.The human remains had territory probably extended from present-day although Watkin Tench had noted earlier that the been either interred or abandoned in the rock Cremorne Point, called Wullworra-jeung by Aboriginal Cammeraygal survived the first wave of infection in shelter though there was evidence of subsequent people, to Woodford Bay in the west and as far north 1789 relatively well. This did not prevent their land human disturbance. A small tooth with traces of as the Turramurra area, the land of the being appropriated as early as 1794 when Samuel vegetable gum found near the skeleton suggests Darramurragal. Lightfoot was ‘granted’ 30 acres at Kirribilli. that the woman had adorned her hair or wore a necklace. Much of what we know about the Cammeraygal References to the Cammeraygal and other original comes from the written and pictorial observations of clans become less frequent from the early 1800s – a Most of the recovered artefacts were waste flakes the early European colonists. The collective term reflection of the social disruption. In the 1820s the from tool manufacture and tiny stone tools such as ‘tribe’ was often used in these accounts. However, Guringai man Bungaree camped with others at barbs, known as microliths. There were fabricating today the term band or clan is generally. Sometimes Kirribilli in the 1820s, despite having been ‘given’ land stones, scrapers and cores. Food remains consisted names refer to a language group. The Kuringai (or at nearby Georges Head to farm by Governor almost entirely of shellfish. The main species were Guringai) of the far northern Sydney and Broken Bay Macquarie. He is said to have referred to the whole of the rock oyster, the hairy mussel and the Sydney area is such an example. Some have argued that the the north shore as his land. cockle and mud oyster, both of which are now Cammeraygal were part of this language group. virtually extinct in Port Jackson. Their presence Surveyor and north shore resident JF Mann compiled Others, including the archaeologist Val Attenbrow, confirms the importance of the harbour as a source of a list of ‘Cammeray Tribe’ words sometime after suggest that the Cammeraygal were part of the food. The study concluded that the site had been 1884, having lived in Sydney since 1842. The list coastal Darug language group which included other used by women, who gathered shellfish, and men, included ‘makoora’ for fish and ‘Noaie’ for canoe. The Harbour groups to the south and west. who made and repaired implements. word for both lightning and candle was ‘kelly’. The colonists noted that the Cammeraygal were The group of pictographs or rock engravings at Balls There were several written accounts of groups of ‘robust and muscular’ people, and the men presided th Head, featuring a shoal of fish, human figures and a Aboriginal people in the North Sydney area in the 19 over the initiation of young males from other Sydney large marine creature, is further testimony to the century. Again these people may have come together area groups. cultural significance of the Harbour. from other dislocated clans. As late as 1878 a group A Cammeraygal man called Carradah made the was camping at Berrys Bay. It is possible that this Aboriginal people were employed as servants through acquaintance of Lieutenant Lidgbird Ball of the ship group, like other Aboriginal people around the to the 20th century. The Aboriginal activist Margaret Supply. The connection between the two men was harbour, were moved on to La Perouse to the south Tucker worked as a maid in Neutral Bay in the 1920s, 1 one of hundreds of Aboriginal girls and young women Wallumedegal Clan who were thought to have lived in from Cootamundra Girls Home who were trained and the North Sydney area because of a reference to NORTH SYDNEY’S sent out for domestic service. them occupying the ‘opposite shore’. They resided west of the Lane Cove River ABORIGINAL PAST In the 1950s Indigenous activist Faith Bandler, herself of South Sea Island descent, lived in a flat at 109 WARRINGAH - is of Aboriginal origin and probably Pacific Highway in North Sydney where meetings with refers to territory in the Middle Harbour area. It was Aboriginal activists were regularly held. In the 1980s used to name one of the first wards of North Sydney the activist and writer Roberta Sykes lived in Ernest Council from 1891 covering much of Neutral Bay and Street North Sydney where she met others including Cremorne; a park in the 1890s (now Anderson Park); poet and writer Kevin Gilbert and Eddie Mabo, who a road in Cammeray; and the Expressway built in the stayed over during long train trips from Queensland to 1960s Melbourne. WARUNGAREEYAH - the Aboriginal name for Blues In the 2011 Census 16 people in North Sydney Point. identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. WEEYUH WEEYUH - the Aboriginal name for Dual Indigenous and European names are being Careening Cove introduced throughout Sydney. Words that were WULLWORRA-JEUNG - the Aboriginal name for recorded in earlier times beginning with a ‘hard’ C, K Robertsons (Cremorne) Point or Q are now generally spelled with G, better reflecting traditional Aboriginal pronunciation: ____________ BENELONG ROAD - after the Aboriginal man who Recommended reading: befriended Governor Phillip. Val Attenbrow, Sydney’s Aboriginal Past, CAMMERAY - from the Cammeraygal clan University of NSW Press, 2012 CARRADAH PARK - after the Cammeraygal man Ian Hoskins, Aboriginal North Sydney: an outline of who befriended Lieutenant Lidgbird Ball indigenous history, North Sydney Council, 2007 KIRRIBILLI - from the Aboriginal word `Kiarabilli' Ian Hoskins, Sydney Harbour: a history, University meaning a `good fishing spot' of NSW Press, 2010 PARAWEEN STREET - from an Aboriginal word Grace Karskens, The Colony: a history of early `Parriwi' believed to refer to the Spit in Middle Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2010 Harbour JF Mann, ‘Aboriginal names and words of the GOOWEEBAHREE - the Aboriginal name for Cammeray Tribe’, Mitchell Library Lavender Bay was originally recorded as Quiberee (front photograph: Aboriginal carving Balls Head, c1900) meaning a spring of fresh water. WALLUMETTA PLACE - derived from the .

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