INDIGENOUS HISTORY
Learning about our Indigenous culture, Kariong, NSW Central Coast. Left to right. Back row: Sarah Boyd, Libby Woodhill, Layla Hickson, Charlotte Lowe, Freida Kerr, Rhonda Kerr, Alexandra Egan, Miss Kate Howie, Kyana Cvetkovic. Front Row: Summer Humes, Lili Wymond, Shakira Tyson, Isabelle Docker, Olivia Anderson
A personal experience combining academic research with secondary teaching By Ryan Stewart, History Teacher My PhD thesis is titled Remembering Contact History on the Central Coast of New South Wales. Why this topic and why now? In this article, I explore the questions of why this topcs and why now?’ My supervisors are Associate Professor Nancy Cushing and Professor Lyndall Ryan from the University of Newcastle. My supervisors and I bemoan the lack of academic research on frontier contact where I live, on the Central Coast, and my thesis aims to hopefully fill aspects of this void. Why me? I’ve lived in Bateau Bay most of my life (except for four years in the eastern suburbs of Sydney). I’m nonIndigenous, a complete ‘white fulla’, however, I was lucky
www.pymblelc.nsw.edu.au
enough to have a grandfather in Keith Whitfield, former deputy mayor of Gosford Council. My grandfather showed me Indigenous sites on the Coast in the late 1980s and early 1990s – this sparked my interest. I then undertook Aboriginal Studies for my HSC, became a History teacher and here I am today teaching History at Pymble. Even as a ‘white fulla’, when I move around this country, I feel the presence of the First Nations peoples and their story and experiences of contact need to be told. The impact of disease, violence and dispossession on the First Nations peoples of the region we now call the Central Coast was nothing short of horrendous.
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