Gweagal

The Gweagal (also spelt Gwiyagal) are a clan of the Dharawal people of Indigenous Australians.[1][2][lower-alpha 1] Their descendants are traditional custodians of the southern geographic areas of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Artwork depicting the first contact with Captain James Cook & crew on the shores of the Kurnell Peninsula, New South Wales

Country

The Gweagal lived on the area of southern side of the Georges River and Botany Bay stretching towards the Kurnell Peninsula.[3] Although not clearly defined, their traditional lands are thought to have possibly extended over much of the Cronulla-Sutherland area as far west as Liverpool.[1] Their neighbours were the Bidjigal people.

Culture
Aboriginal hunting implements and weapons

The Gweagal Aborigines are the guardians of the sacred white clay pits in their territory, which are considered sacred. Historically clay was used to line the base of their canoes so they could light fires, and also as a white body paint, (as witnessed by Captain James Cook). Colour was added to the clay using berries, which produced a brightly coloured paint that was used in ceremonies. It was also eaten as a medicine, an antacid. Geebungs and other local berries were mixed in the clay.[4]

Aboriginal rock shelters

Naturally forming and human-modified caves or hanging rock shelters were regularly utilised by the first Australians during walkabout – seasonally guided maintenance of land and the vast natural gardens routinely tended by the Aboriginal people.

In the Royal National Park some of the caves were used as burial sites. In tribal lands and Dreamtime places this cultural practice continues. Charles Sturt documented large stone dwellings consisting of four rooms or more, along the banks of the Murray River and the shores of Lake Victoria, New South Wales. These buildings were re-purposed by settlers in the early years of colonisation, and the foundations of many such buildings can be seen in archaeological sites around Australia.

A rock cave collapse at Port Hacking before the landing of Cook claimed many lives of the Gweagal. This cave was later dynamited, revealing many skeletons.

Caves and shelters are located in various places along the Georges River, which over the years have eroded into the sandstone cliffs. There is a large cave located in Peakhurst with its ceiling blackened from smoke. There are caves located around Evatt Park, Lugarno with oyster shells ground into the cave floor. A cave has also been discovered near a Baptist church in Lugarno, and another near Margaret Crescent, Lugarno (now destroyed by development), which was found to contain ochre and a spearhead on the floor of the cave when it was excavated. Another cave exists on Mickey's Point, Padstow, which was named after a local Aborigine.[5]

Australia's First Nation people decorated their caves and homes with carvings, sculpture, beads, paintings, drawings and etchings using white, red and other coloured earth, clay or charcoal. Symbols such as "water well" with a red ochre hand directed newcomers to wells and water storage. Footprints on a line signalled that there were stairs or steps in the area. The dwellings boasted thermal mass unlike modern day housing, which kept an even temperature year-round. Rugs, furs and woven mats provided further warmth and comfort. Fire was used to cook, produce materials and keep their shelters warm.

Food source

The territory of the Gweagal had much to offer. The Georges River provided fish and oysters. Various small creeks, most of which are now covered drains, provided fresh water. Men and women fished in canoes or from the shore using barbed spears and fishing lines with hooks that were crafted from crescent-shaped pieces of shell. Waterfowl could be caught in the swamplands near Towra Point and the variety of soils supported a variety of edible and medicinal plants. Birds and their eggs, possums, wallabies and goannas were also a part of their staple diet. The abundant food source meant that these natives were less nomadic than those of Outback Australia.

Middens

Middens have been found all the way along tidal sections of the Georges River where shells, fish bones, and other waste products have been thrown into heaps. These, as well as environmental modifications such as dams, building foundations, large earthen excavations and wells, gives evidence of where Aborigines established villages for long periods, and are found where oysters, fresh water, and strategic views come together. Middens have been found in Oatley, and Oatley Point was known as a feasting ground. In Lugarno a midden is still existent and may be found in Lime Kiln Bay.

First contact with Europeans

The Gweagal Aborigines made first visual contact with Cook and other Europeans on the 29 April 1770 in the area which is now known as "Captain Cook's Landing Place", in the Kurnell area of Kamay Botany Bay National Park.[6] It was the first attempt made, on Cook's first voyage, in the Endeavour, to make contact with the Aboriginal people of Australia.[7]

In sailing into the bay they had noted two Gweagal men posted on the rocks, brandishing spears and fighting sticks, and a group of four too intent on fishing to pay much attention to the ship's passage. Using a telescope as they lay offshore, approximately a kilometre from an encampment consisting of 6–8 gunyahs, Joseph Banks recorded observing an elderly woman come out of the bush, with at first three children in tow, then another three, and light a fire. While busying herself, she looked at the ship at anchor without showing any perplexity. She was joined by the four fishermen, who brought their catch to be cooked.[7]

After an hour and a half, Cook, Banks, Daniel Solander and Tupaia, together with 30 of the crew, made for the beach, only to be threatened by two warriors. They threw some gifts on shore, trying to get over the idea they had come to seek fresh water, but the Gweagal men reacted with hostile diffidence. Cook felt it necessary to encourage a change of attitude by shooting one of the men in the leg with light shot. Unperturbed, the wounded man retrieved a shield from a gunyah before returning. By that time the crew had already beached their boat.[8]

The sailors then proceeded to walk onto the beach and up to an encampment. Both Cook and Banks tried, with great difficulty, to make contact with the local people but without success due to the Aborigines avoiding contact after the first encounter. They simply went about their daily affairs, seeming to ignore the strangers; they fished from canoes, cooked shellfish on the shore and walked along the beach, but at the same time, watched Cook's crew with caution.

The Gweagal Spears and Shield

In 1770, after returning to England from their voyage in the South Pacific, Cook and Banks brought with them a large collection of flora and fauna, along with cultural artefacts from their most recent venture. The find included a collection of roughly fifty Australian Aboriginal spears that belonged to the Gweagal people. Banks was convinced the spears were abandoned (on the shores of Kurnell) and "thought it no improper measure to take with them all the lances which they could find, somewhere between 40 or 50".

Four of those spears – according to Peter Turbet, the only material reminders of the first meeting between Aborigines and Englishmen on the east coast – still exist: two bone-tipped three-pronged spears (mooting), one bone-tipped four-pronged spear (calarr) and a shaft with a single hardwood head.[9] Cook gave the spears to his patron, John Montagu, First Lord of the Admiralty and Fourth Earl of Sandwich, who then gave them, to his alma mater Trinity College. Archaeologists quote them as being priceless, as the spears are among the few remaining artefacts that can be traced back to Cook's first voyage. Although the Gweagal Spears remain in the ownership of Trinity College, they are now on display at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge in England.[10][11][12]

The so-called Gweagal Shield is often claimed to be a bark shield dropped by the warrior Cooman, who was shot in the leg on 29 April 1770, and which has been in the possession of the British Museum for many years. Sixth-generation descendant of Cooman, Rodney Kelly, has been campaigning since 2016 for the return of the shield and the spears, saying that "the shield is the most significant and potent symbol of imperial aggression – and subsequent Indigenous self-protection and resistance – in existence",[11][13]

The shield was lent to the National Museum of Australia for an exhibition called Encounters: Revealing stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander objects from the British Museum, from November 2015 to March 2016,[14][15] which was where Kelly first saw it.[16]

In April 2016, the British Museum offered to display the shield in Australia on a loan, but its permanent return is the only acceptable outcome for the Gweagal people. The NSW Parliament passed a motion acknowledging the clan as the shield's rightful owners in August 2016 and two months later, the federal Senate did the same.[17][13]

Kelly has made several crowdfunded trips to the UK, in late 2016 Kelly travelled to the UK and Germany[11][18] On this trip, Kelly discovered that the Ethnological Museum of Berlin holds another shield also said to be connected to Cook's 1770 visit to Botany Bay.[17]

In November 2016, the British Museum began investigating the provenance of the shield and held a workshop involving various experts, including Aboriginal participants, which challenged their previous published claims about its origins. The resultant study, published in 2018,[19] disputes the origin of the shield and undermines Kelly's claim.[16][20] The scholarly research shows that the shield in the British Museum is not the so-called Gweagal Shield taken from Botany Bay in April 1770.[21]

Notable people
  • Biddy Giles (Biyarrung)(b.1820-died ca 1890s) was a Gweagal woman who lived throughout her life on traditional Gweagal land, and frequently impressed whites who employed her as a guide by her profound knowledge of the botany and landscape. She was a fluent Dharawal speaker.[22]
  • Rodney Kelly (born 1977) is a Gweagal activist campaigning for the return of the Gweagal Shield held by the British Museum, as well as other Gweagal artefacts in museums across Europe and Australia.[23]

See also

Notes
  1. Norman Tindale thought they were part of the Eora. (Tindale 1974, p. 128)

Citations
  1. Lawrence 1999, p. 2.
  2. Goodall & Cadzow 2009, p. 31.
  3. Goodall & Cadzow 2009, p. 87.
  4. Sutherland.
  5. McGuinness n.d.
  6. Captain Cook's Landing Place.
  7. Turbet 2011, p. 9.
  8. Turbet 2011, pp. 9–10.
  9. Turbet 2011, p. 10.
  10. SMH 2002.
  11. Daley 2016.
  12. McKenna 2018.
  13. Shoebridge 2016.
  14. NMA Botany Bay.
  15. NMA Encounters.
  16. Keenan 2018.
  17. Voon 2017.
  18. Keenan 2016.
  19. Nugent & Sculthorpe 2018, pp. 28–43.
  20. Lauder 2018.
  21. Thomas, Nicholas (2018). "A Case of Identity: The Artefacts of the 1770 Kamay (Botany Bay) Encounter". Australian Historical Studies. 49:1: 4–27.
  22. Goodall & Cadzow 2009, pp. 80–108.
  23. Malvern 2018.

Sources

Further reading

Gweagal shield
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