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People of the Sydney Region
Aboriginal place names around Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay
The Aboriginal place names on the map in this site come from historical
documents and publications dating from 1788 to1899.
One of the earliest manuscripts, Vocabulary of the language
of N. S. Wales in the neighbourhood of Sydney (Native and English)....;
was written by Second Lieutenant William Dawes, a marine surveyor
who came with the First Fleet in January 1788 and returned to England
in December 1791.
Many of the place names listed here come from another document,
Vocabulary of the language of N S Wales in the neighbourhood
of Sydney (Native and English, but not alphabetical) 1790-1792....;
which is attached to Dawes' manuscripts, and has recently been attributed
to Governor Arthur Phillip, Judge-Advocate David Collins and Captain
John Hunter.
Apart from William Dawes, who we know gained much of his information
about the language of coastal Sydney directly from Aboriginal people
(in particular a woman, Patyegorang), Aboriginal sources are not
given for the place names listed in most documents. However, a comment
by Captain Watkin Tench suggests that place names in Vocabulary
1790-1792 may have come from Arabanoo, a man who was originally
called 'Manly' by the British.
By the 1820s few of the original inhabitants of the shores of
lower Port Jackson remained in the area, and most people who camped
around these shores from this time on appear to be from other areas.
It is possible that some names recorded in documents written after
1820 were provided by people who did not speak the Port Jackson
dialects, and who perhaps gave these places their own names.
The names recorded are principally those of the bays and headlands
and other landscape features around the shorelines. There would
have been Aboriginal names for places in all parts of the country.
Those place names that were recorded may simply reflect the focus
of interest for the first British surveyors and administrators as
they were mapping the country.
Copyright © Australian Museum, 2002
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