CHAPTER THREE
Australian Indigenous Knowledges and Voices in Country
Lynette Riley, Tarunna Sebastian and Ben Bowen
The University of Sydney’s Camperdown Campus and surrounding areas are examined in this chapter as a case study to explore the site’s hidden Aboriginal history. More specifically, it draws on Aboriginal Songlines and the colonial systems of cultural mapping of urban Country through the use of archives, analysis of geographic sites and an exploration of local narratives. The University of Sydney was established in October 1850 in the City of Sydney, but by 1857 it had shifted two miles out of the city due to increasing student enrolments. The new location in 1857 was a dairy farm, known as Grose Farm, which later became the suburb of Camperdown. Over a century and a half later, the University of Sydney has expanded to include six different campuses within the wider Sydney region after reaching its full capacity at Camperdown. At this point it is important to note that all Land in Australia was and will always be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land as sovereignty was never ceded. The University of Sydney’s Camperdown Campus site belongs to the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation; the Aboriginal history of the Camperdown Campus has remained locked away in archives and within Aboriginal families, its existence repressed by the dominant culture until the last few decades.1 This chapter will explore the effects of colonisation on urban land design, management and tenure through the voices of Aboriginal people. It will also address Aboriginal people’s relationship with, to and through Country,2 showing the hidden history of Aboriginal custodianship and care for, by and with Country and the underpinning of Indigenous knowledges beneath the turf, mortar and concrete of settler colonial occupation of the University of Sydney’s Camperdown Campus. The authors are writing from the unceded Lands of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, who have practised their sovereignty over Australian Indigenous Knowledges
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