First Encounters

For the first few years after European settlement, Aboriginal People on the Georges River continued to live traditionally, with campsites, shell middens and art works along its length. Extensive trade networks had been developed by communities to source tools or the raw materials needed to make them, of stone, bone and shells. The St. George district was slower to develop than many areas around Sydney, due to the belief that it was an undesirable tract of land for settlement, as well as the barrier formed by the Cooks River. However, the lives of Aboriginal People along the river were severely impacted. With food supplies interrupted and social structures fragmented, confrontations between European farmers and Aboriginal People began in the Georges River area in 1799. Frontier violence raged across parts of Sydney between the 1790s and 1810s.

The Bidjigal warrior Pemulwuy initiated a war of resistance in the early 1790s, leading raids on settlers at locations including Toongabbie, Georges River and Parramatta. Despite being seriously wounded in 1797, he eluded capture, gaining heroic status, and continued to be admired by many generations of Aboriginal People after his death. He was similarly respected by Governor King, who in June 1802 after the warrior’s death, wrote that he regarded Pemulwuy as ‘a terrible pest to the colony, [but] …a brave and independent character’1.

‘Pimbloy: Native of New Holland in a canoe of that country’, 1803 Facsimile etching, National Library of Australia collection