Salt Pan Creek

While the Aboriginal Protection Board exerted significant control over the lives of Aboriginal People into the 20th century, more independent settlements existed in Sydney. An important tributary of the Georges River, Salt Pan Creek near Peakhurst was by the 1920s still an area of low density, with few houses and little urban development. The area offered several Aboriginal families a degree of freedom from the ‘unwelcome visits of local Council and Aboriginal Protection Board officials’1. A camp had existed at this site since the 1910s and families were able to fish and collect wildflowers and gum tips, selling some at markets. Aboriginal men worked in local industries, while others made boomerangs from gathered mangrove wood, and their children attended the public school in Peakhurst.

The site became a focal point of intensifying Aboriginal resistance and political activism. Joe Anderson, also known as King Burraga, was one of the first Aboriginal men to use film to demand recognition for his people. Standing on the banks of Salt Pan Creek in 1933 he delivered a message via Cinesound news, making a strong statement in support of Indigenous rights and representation in Federal parliament. Aboriginal People at Salt Pan Creek, however, were not always welcomed by neighbouring residents. Local Progress Associations, seeking to shape the economic, cultural and leisure opportunities offered by the Georges River at a time of increasing suburbanisation, eventually had the Aboriginal community at Salt Pan Creek evicted, and the settlement closed in 1939.