With the invasion of the Sydney region, the Cadigal people were decimated but there are descendants of the Eora people still living in Sydney today. Suburbs close to the city such as Glebe are also the home of the Cadigal and Wangal Wangal ancestors and the surrounding bushland contains remnants of traditional plant, bird and animal life with fish and rock oysters available from Blackwattle Bay.

	Click on this interactive map to view the location of the tribes in the Sydney area. Map: Locations of Aboriginal groups in the Sydney Area. Based upon a map by J. Goodrum in Australians to 1788, p. 345. (Fairfax, Syme and Weldon Associates, Sydney, 1987)

Clans or bands (called "tribes" by the Europeans) within Sydney belonged to several major language groups, often with coastal and inland dialects, including Dharug, Dharawal/Tharawal, Gundungurra and Kurringgai.

There is some disagreement as to the degree of cultural separateness of the people who traditionally lived in the adjoining lands which comprise Greater Sydney, encompassing most of the western suburbs and stretching up to the Blue Mountains. The claim that the language groups listed above were of one tribe is based on an understanding that they spoke the same language, but in two distinct dialects.

However, there is much evidence to suggest that the major language groups of greater Sydney were different groups using different languages and different initiation rites. There is evidence of Aboriginal people migrating in a north-south direction but none from east to west. The appearance of men from the inland group was different from that of coastal men who were missing their right incisor tooth, removed during their initiation.

Governor Phillip estimated there were about 1500 Aboriginal people within a 10 mile radius of Port Jackson in 1788. But there is much scepticism about population figures offered by historians and even those in official government parties. It must be remembered that there were bounties on the heads of Aboriginal people at one stage, and some whites went as far as digging bodies up to make money. Based on these circumstances and unreliable guesstimates, it is difficult to determine population figures at the point of contact or afterwards.

After the deaths of so many local people due to smallpox, other diseases and warfare, new groups of remnant tribes formed. Those who gathered north of the harbour became known as the "Kissing Point Tribe" (an old name for the Ryde area) while over 200 Kooris lived in Woolloomooloo which remains an important site for Aboriginal people. It was set aside for them and Governor Macquarie re-dedicated it as a protected area in 1817. Huts and boats were built for the use of the Aborigines. Later Governors were less concerned and gradually the Indigenous people were pushed further out.

Blanket distribution lists of the 1830s show that, apart from a group living in government boatsheds at Circular Quay, few people identified as Aboriginal were living in Sydney. Many had moved to places such as La Perouse on Botany Bay, south of the city.

The group at the boatsheds (on the west side of Circular Quay near the present-day Museum of Contemporary Art) camped there until 1879. In that year they were finally dispossessed of that space because Sydney was staging an International Exhibition and wanted to hide this side of Sydney life from visitors. Accordingly large numbers of Kooris were �encouraged' to join the growing community at La Perouse.

In 1996, the Australian Bureau of Statistics noted that 117 people living within the City of Sydney boundary identified as Aboriginal people (this represented 0.9% of the city�s residential population while Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders generally made up 2%, or around 386,000, of the overall national rate.

This low figure hides a greater population because many Aboriginal people have negative experiences of government intervention, and accordingly do not participate in census recording.

(By the way, the surveys conducted by the Aborigines Welfare Board after 1943 categorised them as full-bloods, half-castes and lesser castes, defining for Aborigines for the first time their own Aboriginality.)

There is no secret to the formula of working out where Aboriginal people originally lived. They needed food to eat and clean water to drink. Campsites were usually located close to the shore, especially during summer when fish and shellfish was the main food. The Eora are known to have inhabited The Rocks Area before the invasion. A 1994 excavation at Cumberland Street uncovered a campfire (radiocarbon dated to about 1500AD) with the remains of a meal consisting of snapper and rock oysters. At the foot of the cannon at Dawes Point are large flat stones said to have been used for baking whole fish.

A stylised painting by Governor Philip Gidley King of Aborigines cooking and eating fish around a campfire soon after the arrival of the First Fleet.
(Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. Banks Papers Series 36a.04)

Many of Sydney's main thoroughfares, such as George Street, Oxford Street and King Street Newtown followed Aboriginal tracks which served as trading routes between farmed grasslands or bountiful fishing areas.

The harbour was exploited for food using fishing line made from the inner bark of the kurrajong and hibiscus trees and multi-pronged spears tipped with bone. The many varieties of fish and shellfish � oysters, mussels and cockles - were supplemented with vegetables, grubs, birds, possums, wombats and kangaroos. With fish available all year round, there was no need to leave the coast for food.Aborigines used bark canoes for fishing and as modes of transportation along the Parramatta River. Watkin Tench's  journals record him seeing two Aboriginal women bodysurfing on bark from Milson�s Point to Bennelong Point.

Sydney has more rock engraving sites than any other city in Australia. These sites demonstrate occupation, art and social systems. Engraved pavement areas were once widespread in the Sydney City area, but many have been lost beneath shopping malls, hotels and office towers. Today, many residential backyards, industrial estates and parks in inner-city harbour settings are beneficiaries of the engraving sites that remain.

There are eight recorded sites within the City of Sydney Council boundaries comprising two middens, a rock engraving, three open campsites, a burial site, and one historic site. But there are many other commonly-known sites within the City including Garden Island, where Bungaree is buried, and Angel Place, built over the former Tank Stream between George and Pitt Streets. Fifty-four flaked stone artefacts were recovered here during excavation in 1997, providing evidence that Aboriginal people flaked stone along the banks of the former creek-line.

Analysis of these remains sheds further light on the manner in which the local people organised their stone-flaking technology. It appears that they may have been restricted in their access to good quality raw materials and were forced to use what was available to them. In this case, water-worn stream pebbles appear to have been the primary source of raw material flaked at the site.

The stone tool remains in Angel Place are indicative of open sites along minor and temporary creeks in the Sydney area, reflecting intermittent occupation and short-term camping events. Although there is limited archaeological evidence of Aboriginal use of the Tank Stream because 200 years of European occupation and development has destroyed such resources, it does constitute a point of first contact between the local Aboriginal people living in the Tank Stream Valley, and the European settlers who arrived in 1788.

North of Angel Place where the Tank Stream originally discharged into Sydney Harbour (near Bridge Street and Circular Quay), access to fish and shell-fish resources are likely to have provided a relatively predictable and concentrated range of dietary resources. South of the site, within the swampy margins of Hyde Park (where the Tank Stream originated), waterfowl and terrestrial mammals such as macropods may have been sought. Given the nature of the terrain around central Sydney, Aboriginal campsites would have been on ground least affected by swamp areas. Therefore major campsites would have been on the more habitable ground.

Governor Phillip decided to build Sydney around the Tank Stream valley, and it became the colony�s water source, quickly destroyed by settlers.

Bennelong Point is most famous for the Sydney Opera House. The Aboriginal people knew it as "Jubgalee". It then became known as Cattle Point because of the livestock landed there from the First Fleet, and was later renamed Bennelong Point after a hut was built there for Bennelong. This hut was a gathering place for the Aborigines at Sydney Cove. Adjacent to here, at Wuganmagali (Farm Cove), the colonists in 1790 first recorded seeing a corroboree. Bennelong spoke of how he and his wife were attached to "Memel", now known as "Goat Island", which was the original place of his father.

There are a number of cemeteries that are now built over which contain Aboriginal remains, including the old burial ground under the Town Hall. Cora Gooseberry was buried in 1847 in the Devonshire Street cemetery which has since been disturbed for the building of Central Railway. The first Aborigine buried in the European way was named Tommy Tommy in the Aboriginal section at Camperdown Cemetery. This cemetery also contains a sandstone obelisk erected in 1944 by the Rangers League of NSW in memory of him and three other Kooris buried there: Mogo, William Perry (died 1849 aged 26) and Wandelina Cabrorigirel (died 1860 aged 18). However their graves are no longer identifiable.

Other sites include the Museum of Sydney corner of Bridge and Phillip Streets, which is also site of the First Government House. One of the three known burials there was that of Arabanoo. The Museum of Sydney has recognised the Cadigal people with its Cadigal Place Gallery and its sculpture 'The Edge of the Trees.'

Taken by a photographer from Man: the magazine for men, this image shows a section of the Day of Mourning meeting which took place in the Australian Hall at 150 Elizabeth Street on 26 January 1938. John Patten is standing on the right.
(Man, March 1938. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.)

The Foundation for Aboriginal Affairs was a popular haunt in the 1960s, while other "contemporary corroborees" were happening at the Airforce Hall, the Railway Institute and Redfern and Darlington Town Halls.

Aboriginal people continued to reside and actively participate in Sydney and greater Sydney, making significant contributions to its cultural, economic and social fabric.