Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for millennia, a continuous presence, nurtured by the land. In the Campbelltown area the Dharawal or Tharawal language was spoken from south of Botany Bay to the Shoalhaven and inland to Camden. The Dharawal lived on the rich and diverse sources of food from the waterways and forests, which also nourished the elaborate stories, songs, laws and customs passed on over thousands of years.

News of the arrival of the ghostly strangers in 1788 is likely to have spread to Dharawal country quickly from their Gwiyagal kin on the shores of Botany Bay. Perhaps before meeting them, many Dharawal would have come across new items like metal and glass along their trade routes, and seen feral animals on hunting grounds. Countless also fell victim to European disease - including a smallpox epidemic in 1789.

Colonial contact

Throughout the 1790s, colonists experienced episodes of near-starvation, failing to comprehend their new environment and its resistance to their farming practices. A stray herd of lost First Fleet cattle was rediscovered in the area now known as Camden. Named 'Cowpastures', travel was forbidden there during the colony's precarious times. Perhaps this same herd is depicted by Dharawal on their sandstone shelter walls.

In the early 1800s the Minto, Bringelly and Cabramatta areas were opened for cultivation to diminish the attraction of the growing wild Cow Pastures herds. As the colony expanded, relations with Indigenous people deteriorated. 1814-1816 was a period of escalating conflict across the colony, including in Dharawal country, with atrocities committed by farmers and militia against Aboriginal people, some responding with resistance and reprisal. In 1814, Governor Macquarie admonished colonists in Appin and Cowpastures not to treat Aboriginal people with inhumanity, following an atrocity involving the murder and mutilation of an Aboriginal woman and her two children.

Tensions mounting, soldiers were instructed to capture people in Cowpastures. Proclamations forbade gatherings of Aboriginal people near farms or villages, called for the capture of specific warriors, and forbade Europeans from giving haven or provisions to Aboriginal people.

In 1816, soldiers pursuing Aboriginal warriors near William Redfern's farm in the Minto area found the deserted campsite of a group being sheltered by a farmer in Appin, the fires still burning. Hearing a child's cry in the moonlight, the soldiers pursued - shooting some and driving others to cliff-top deaths. Fourteen were reported dead in the Appin Massacre, including not only Dharawal but a Burragorang man, indicating that traditional rivalries were being overcome against a greater enemy.

The Appin Massacre, the appropriation of traditional hunting lands, and continuing disease all took their toll on the Dharawal. Despite official counts that the local community had disappeared by the mid-1800s, historical accounts indicate a continued presence - not only of Dharawal, but Indigenous people from other parts of country.

Indigenous Minto today

The first census that counted Indigenous people in 1971 recorded only small numbers in the area claiming Aboriginal heritage, but there is strong evidence to suggest that this was a major under-estimation. By 1988, the community was estimated to be numbered in the thousands. Today, the Indigenous community in Minto and Campbelltown continues to grow.

Dharawal country today continues to welcome and give shelter to newcomers. Like many traditional lands over which cities and towns are now erected, much of the past is hidden, but traces of the land's first custodians remain. Paintings and rock engravings, middens, the grooves in which native seeds and plants were ground, the remnants of bush ovens, as well as the stories and lore still held and passed on by the Dharawal are reminders that long before Europeans, Aboriginal people were nurtured by and cared for this land.

Memory and storytelling still feature prominently in attempts to reconcile contemporary Australian identity. In April 2006 and 2007, a memorial was held at the site of the Appin Massacre, south west of Campbelltown. Echoes of the past still resound, and as we continue to share stories and experiences of displacement and change. There is much to be learned still from the traditional owners of this land.

Indiengous Minto: adapted from 'Campbelltown: the Bicentennial History' by Carol Liston. With thanks to Glenda Chalker, Tharawal Lands Council