The Gaimaragal and Garigal People are from what we now call the Pittwater and Kuring-Gai Areas. They had a close relationship with the water, building canoes from timber and cooking seafood on board these vessels in small fires. They also sourced a variety of animals and plants for food from the landscape such as birds, mammals, reptiles, berries, and roots. They created rock art, engravings, and had middens throughout the area.

Towards Europeans, the Garigal and Gaimaragal People were ‘hospitable’. As colonists stole their land, killed their people, and spread disease, those who survived were forced away from their homes by the coast and lost their ways of living as a consequence.

Since 1788, the degradation of the bushland and ecology in Pittwater and beyond from weeds, development, inappropriate fire regimes, disease, overfishing, clearing, domesticated animals, and European ways of living, in general, have completely erased the possibility of living off of the land.

We acknowledge that these ways of living that have been stolen are a product of European invasion and offer our deepest apologies for what has been lost, and gratitude for what knowledge Indigenous elders choose to share.

Sovereignty has never been ceded.

Further Reading

Northern Beaches Council. (2015). Aboriginal People. https://files-preprod-d9.northernbeaches.nsw.gov.au/nbc-prod-files/documents/general-information/pittwaters-past/lh-aboriginalpeople.pdf