WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this website contains images and voices of people who have died.
1) Introduction
Uncle Shayne Williams
Burraga Foundation
2) Welcome to Gamay
Welcome
Burri Burri
Colonial Naming
Bare Island
Old Wharf - New Wharf
Monuments
Grandmother’s birthplace
Tin Shanties
Medical Waste/Tip
4) Mission Life - Elaroo Ave
The Reserve
Dog Tags
Mission Manager
Old Church
The Fence Came Down
5) Yarra House Reclaiming
Yarra House
What it is used for now
6) La Perouse School
Going to school
French National Anthem
7) Molineaux
Cooks landing
Water
Protectionist Board
Families escaping up the river
Uncle Joe Anderson and Salt Pan Creek
Our Future, Your Support
Introduction
Thank you for joining as a guest of the Burraga Foundation on an On-Country Experience with Uncle Shayne Williams. Today we will make our way to La Perouse by bus, where you will be accompanied by Uncle Shayne Williams to learn about the area, Dharawal Culture and Uncle Shayne’s lived experience.
Uncle Shayne
Dr Shayne T Williams is an Elder from the Aboriginal community of La Perouse, located on the northern side of Botany Bay in Sydney. His parents were Thomas Henry Williams OBE and Iris Williams (née Callaghan). Uncle Shayne is Dharawal through his paternal and maternal grandmothers, Dhungutti through his maternal grandfather and Gomilaroi through his paternal grandfather.
From 1991 to 2011, Shayne worked within the tertiary sector, specialising in Indigenous studies, Indigenous education and Indigenous research. He has previously worked as an Aboriginal Language and Culture Consultant with the NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group, actively engaged in promoting the advancement of Aboriginal language and culture nests within New South Wales. Uncle Shayne has been a passionate advocate for advancing Aboriginal students through localised Aboriginal cultural education, curriculum development and the professional development of teachers. Uncle Shayne has numerous Board roles and is founding Board member of the Burraga Foundation.
Burraga Foundation
Our initiatives champion a better understanding of Aboriginal Australia for all Australians. We work in partnership with Aboriginal communities to support cultural awareness, community engagement, education and employment opportunities. www.burraga.org
Your Tour
The experience duration is approximately 2 hours in duration.
There are bathroom facilities at the location.
The experience will move to several locations by bus across La Perouse with and opportunity disembark at each.
We invite all participants to ask as many questions as you can, the experience is a culturally safe place, a good conversation supports Uncle to remember knowledge that may not come to light without your help.
Please feel free to take photos, however we ask you not to film Uncle Shayne’s teachings.
This accompanying online resources is a great way to find additional supporting information along the way via your mobile phone, we ask that you turn your phone to silent while using it to access this resource and take pictures.
Thank you for join us, we hope you have an amazing time and ask lots of questions!
Welcome to Gamay
Burri Burri
Colonial Naming
Jean-Francois Galaup De La Perouse. Commander
Commander Jean-Francois Galaup De La Perouse and his crew of approximately 225 departed the French seaport of Brest in 1785 for a four-year navigation of the Pacific. The French expedition arrived in Kamay (Botany Bay) aboard the L’Astrolabe and La Boussole. After leaving Kamay in March 1788 the two vessels sailed northward where they both disappeared somewhere in the Pacific.
Bare Island
Bare Island From Above
Old Wharf - New Wharf
La Perouse Wharf
The wharf where we used to swim during summer. We would also ask visitors to the wharf to throw a coin in the water. We would say to visitors “hey lady or mister throw a coin in the water”. The Paragon boat shed was at the entrance. We’d dive for the coins and then buy chips and a drink at the Paragon for our lunch. My eldest sister would take my twin sisters to the wharf in the 50s, sit them on the rocks and dive for pennies. She would then buy them their lunch.
Monuments
The Foundation Stone of the La Perouse Monument was laid on the 6th September, 1825, by Hyacinthe de Bougainville. De Bougainville stopped over in Sydney for 3 months during a circumnavigation of the world.
La Perouse Monument
Frenchmans Bay
My Grandmother’s Birthplace.
The original La Perouse Aboriginal community housing arrangement.
La Perouse Mission
Mission Life - Elaroo Ave
The Reserve
Community members La Perouse Mission 1890
Dog Tags
The 'dog licence' was another name for Certificates of Exemption. It was a licence to live in a white man's world. It allowed an Aboriginal person to enter town, vote, and send their children to the local school.
Certificates of Exemption were seen by authorities as a key to 'assimilation', but could be withdrawn at any time. To get one, you were forced to renounce your culture, language and family who were still living on missions and reserves.
Old Church
The newly constructed mission church La Perouse 1894
The Fence Came Down
Yarra House Reclaiming
Yarra House
In 1901 George Howe and William Rose opened the Yarra Bay Pleasure Grounds, complete with refreshment rooms, a cricket pitch and stables for 150 horses, at Yarra Beach. There were also refreshment rooms at the southern headland. By 1910 the tramline had been extended and terminated at La Perouse on what is now known as The Loop. La Perouse became famous for its sideshows, such as the snake man, and Aboriginal people became active participants in this economy, throwing boomerangs, selling spears and making shell art for visitors. Nugent says the expectation that one would see Aboriginal people at La Perouse was part of the attraction for tourists.
By Albert James Perier From the collections of the State Library of New South Wales Home and Away
Yarra Bay House was built as a second cable station, and dates from 1903, when the telegraph was transferred there. The State Children's Relief Board's Annual Reports indicate it ran a home for boys at Yarra Bay from around 1917. During the influenza epidemic of 1918 to 1919 Yarra Bay House was emptied to accommodate patients. In June 1927 the Child Welfare Department announced it had bought 'the old cable station' at La Perouse, at a cost of £7,000, intending to convert it to a girls' industrial school to alleviate overcrowding at the Parramatta Industrial School. By the following June about 50 girls were living at La Perouse. Yarra Bay House was gazetted the following October. It seems that, as was the case with Bidura and Royleston, the government had adapted an older building as a children's home. Ronald Arthur, who lived at Yarra Bay House as a ward of the state in 1940, certainly believed that the lovely building he remembers was old and had previously served as a cable station.
Yarra Bay House, at 1 Elaroo Avenue, La Perouse, was a New South Wales Government institution for state children from around 1917 until the early 1980s. Like other homes run by the New South Wales Child Welfare Department, it is a site where the histories of Forgotten Australians and the Stolen Generations coalesce, not least because it was located next to the La Perouse Aboriginal Reserve. It has acquired special significance for Aboriginal communities since its deeds were given to the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council in 1984. It is the administrative headquarters of the Land Council and a base for community organisation, services and activism.
Yarra Bay House -1988 Protest against invasion
Yarra Bay House is now the home of the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council
Established in 1984, the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council (LPLALC) provides culturally appropriate, professional, efficient and effective services of the highest standards to the La Perouse Aboriginal community. The LPLALC is committed to serve Aboriginal people and the broader community with our expertise in cultural, economic, social and spiritual services to achieve a better future for Aboriginal Australians.
The La Perouse Aboriginal Community is the longest functioning and only discreet Aboriginal community in Sydney. Many descendants of the families continue to live within the La Perouse Aboriginal community where they maintain their cultural connection to the coastal Sydney region.
La Perouse School
The school Botany Heads that would go on to be named La Perouse Public School was created on the site of the Customs Tower at La Perouse before being moved to its current position at little bay road.
Molineaux
Cooks landing
Reality and record? We gain some insight into this through Cook’s journal, where he recalls that his landing party encountered two men and that a rock that was thrown by one of the men. He then goes on to describe the firing of a warning shot, followed by two other shots, noting that one man was wounded. He described the men discharging spears in his party’s direction, hence the need to fire. He also described wandering towards a dwelling area and collecting spears from that area. From this account, Australia’s history shows that Cook was attacked by ‘natives’. If, however, you look at this same encounter from our perspective you would understand that two Gweagal men were assiduously carrying out their spiritual duty to Country by protecting Country from the presence of persons not authorised to be there. In our cultures it is not permissible to enter another culture’s Country without due consent. Consent was always negotiated. Negotiation was not necessarily a matter of immediate dialogue, it often involved spiritual communication through ceremony.
Water
On a rocky ledge in the waters of Botany Bay is another small cairn and plaque which identifies what is believed to be the exact spot where cook came ashore. Not far away is another plaque mounted on a rock near a stream, identifying it as the watercourse from which Cook obtained fresh water supplies during his stay at Botany Bay.
Protectionist Board
The NSW Aborigines Protection Board was established in June 1883 by then state premier Alex Stuart. This institution oversaw the establishment of reserves for Aboriginal people to reside on. The board administered the reserves and took over those already being run by the Church.
Implemented nationally, the reserve system separated First Nations people from white populations. This was said to protect Aboriginal people from frontier violence, but it actually served to dispossess them from their ancestral lands.
Over time, the Protection Board sought more power and subsequently received it under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW). It allowed for the removal of Aboriginal people from towns, saw the deployment of police to guard over the reserves and it sanctioned a prohibition on alcohol.
The 1909 Act allowed for the removal of Aboriginal children from their families for the same reasons as white children. However, the Aborigines Protection Amending Act 1915 (NSW) changed this, allowing for the removal of children under any circumstances.
Section 13A of the 1915 Act provided that “the Board may assume full control and custody of the child of any aborigine, if after due inquiry it is satisfied that such a course is in the interest of the moral and physical welfare of such child. The Board may thereupon remove such child”.
This policy of assimilating Aboriginal children into the white community and severing their familial and cultural ties saw babies sent to the Bomaderry United Aborigines Mission Home, boys were sent to Kempsey’s Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home, while girls went to Cootamundra Girls Home.
The official record states that these institutions were bastions of care and education, however oral histories speak of harsh punishment and abuse being commonplace. Many of the girls were sent on to work as servants and child carers in white households, while they themselves were still children. The system of removing the children of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families became known as the Stolen Generations. The 1997 Bringing Them Home report estimates that between one in three to one in ten First Nations children were taken from their families between 1910 and 1970.
As for the impact on those stolen from their families, the report notes that they were more likely to come to the attention of police and end up in gaol, were more susceptible to all forms of abuse, less likely to have stable housing and more likely to engage in drug use.
As Mason points out, “the results of these policies are still being experienced today”. As examples he lists the NT Intervention, the imposition of the cashless welfare card, deaths in custody, police brutality towards First Nations people, the failure of Closing the Gap, and continuing child removals.
In what’s referred to as the ongoing stolen generations Indigenous youths continue to be disproportionately removed from their families and placed in out-of-home care.
The 2020 Productivity Commission outlines that 40 percent of all kids in care nationwide were First Nations, yet Indigenous youths only make up 6 percent of the overall child population.
According to Mason, the Protection Era legacy has emboldened the destruction of culture under the Native Title Act, allowed for the continued view that Aboriginal people need the “benevolent” control of the state, it’s lead to the disbanding of a strong ATSIC and the defunding of the National Congress of First Peoples.
“Among the worst implications today is the divisiveness that’s impeding moves toward regaining sovereignty and self-determination,” Mason concluded.
“These matters have become political ball games with different sides advocating for advisory voices or treaties that look more like service delivery models.”
“The legacy of the Protection Era seems to be thriving.”
Families escaping up the river, Uncle Joe Anderson and Salt Pan Creek
Bi-yar-rung
Born Bi-yar-rung (Biddy Giles) around 1820 into the Gweagal group of the Dharawal people, managed to live on her people's country for her whole life.
From the collections of the State Library of New South Wales
Married early to an older Gweagal man, Cooman or 'King Kooma', Biddy left him to marry Paddy Burragalang (also known as Paddy Davis) moving from Botany to his country the southern part of Dharawal country. Here she had two daughters, Rosie and Ellen, and lived for about 20 years.
Born in 1855 or 1857, Ellen Biddy’d daughter was raised mostly on Dharawal country at the Five Islands near Wollongong. After Paddy's death around 1860, she spent time with her mother who was living at Gurugurang (Mill Creek) on the Georges River.
Ellen Anderson
Ellen was living in the northern Botany Bay camps by 1881 when she became entangled in the Aborigines Protection Board effort to move Aboriginal people away from Sydney, to the Murray River mission at Maloga. A group of people including Ellen were sent by train to Maloga. Here she met and married a Goulburn River man, Hugh Anderson, and started a family. In the mid-1880s, the Maloga Mission was incorporated into the Cumeragunja reserve, a move that Hugh Anderson protested against. Ellen and Hughie moved to Kangaroo Valley reserve that was on 370 acres (150 hectares) of poor land near Barrengarry and could not support the community. Eventually they returned to Cumeragunja. They travelled frequently with their children to see their extended family in the Shoalhaven.
In the 1910s, Ellen, Hugh and their family returned to Sydney, living near Botany and soon moving upriver to the land they eventually purchased on lower Salt Pan Creek where it joined the Georges River. Their block was close to a large midden that spilled glistening shells across the sandy beach, demonstrating centuries of Aboriginal fishing and feasting.
Ellen and Hugh Anderson's home became the focus of a growing community of Aboriginal people, with three weatherboard cottages, some sheds and tents spread over a three-acre area. Some were their adult children with their families and some were Aboriginal people seeking to escape the Protection Board reserve restrictions. By 1926 there were 30 people living in the Salt Pan Creek community. It became a centre of discussion and activism for reform with visitors active in the Australian Aborigines Progressive Association and other Aboriginal rights groups.
Hugh Anderson died in July 1928. As the Depression deepened, the family was not able to pay council rates and by November 1930, they had been forced to sell their Ogilvy Street block. They moved deeper into more secluded bush close to the creek on land they had no secure tenure over.
As the depression deepened from 1929, the community grew, as Aboriginal men were routinely refused unemployment relief work and rations. Increasing disapproval of the camp from white residents' organisations around the area, such as the Herne Bay Progress Association, led to complaints and police visits.
Ellen died in May 1931, leaving her eldest son, Joe Anderson to try and defend his family's camp, alongside sister Dolly Anderson. Dolly, married Thomas Williams Senior, they had a son Thomas Henry Williams Jr OBE married Iris Williams (née Callaghan) parents of Uncle Shayne Williams and Ellen Jane Williams.
From the collections of the State Library of New South Wales
Joe Anderson
Joe Anderson was one of the first Aboriginal men to use film and the cinema to demand recognition for his people. He was filmed delivering a message to the people of Australia, standing on the banks of a tributary of the Georges River called Salt Pan Creek in 1933. Salt Pan Creek was densely colonised; nonetheless, it provided shelter to a nucleus of Aboriginal and undefeated people who reasserted their right to be heard in their own country.
Newspaper article in The Newcastle Sun describing the pending forced eviction of Joe Anderson and the community leaving at the Salt Pan Creek settlement
Newspaper article in The Newcastle Sun describing the pending forced eviction of Joe Anderson and the community leaving at the Salt Pan Creek settlement
Despite the Salt Pan Creek settlement being reported as ‘clean, tidy, and well kept’ in a local newspaper, it was dissolved by the Hurstville Council in 1936. Many of the Aboriginal people who found their home on the Anderson’s property moved further upstream along Salt Pan Creek and settled on the floodplains near the Riverwood Estate. Other families moved on to La Perouse.
Tomas Williams Senior (Grandfather) and Thomas Willams Junior, Uncle Shaynes Father Saltpan Creek 1930s
Uncle Shaynes (Father) - Thomas Williams Junior at Saltpan Creek Bottom Right.
Our Future, Your Support
Thank you for joining us today. The Burraga Foundation continues Joe Anderson’s (King Burraga) advocacy for his people, through delivering a range of initiatives in support of all Australians achieving a better understanding of Aboriginal Australia. Our focus is on supporting young Aboriginal people succeed within their education and helping communities celebrate success.