Celebrating 100 Indigenous UNSW Law Graduates 100-Indigenous-Law-Graduates-Event_Booklet_V13_FIN | Page 33

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Around 1,500 years ago, coastal Sydney people began to use
local materials for their tools, such as shell, bone and quartz from
coastal sandstone.
About 1,000 years ago, they began to make fish hooks from shell,
which were mainly used by women. When Europeans arrived (fig.3),
coastal Sydney people drew a clear distinction between themselves
and those who lived further inland in western Sydney.
Fig.2 Hearth approx. 8,500 years old
By around 4,000 years ago, Aboriginal people in Sydney began to
use ground stone axes (hatchets), and small stone points became
very common. Hafted hatchets were used to cut toeholds in trees
to climb them in search of possums or honey, and to cut bark to
make canoes, shields and containers. Stone points were used to
cut, incise and drill as part of hafted implements, and were also
mounted on spears as barbs. None of the stone raw materials
for these implements are found in the sand dunes or sandstone
outcrops of the coast, so we know that coastal Sydney people were
trading with other groups in western Sydney, south in the Illawarra
and much further away.
Fig.3 J. Walker, 1791. A Map of the Hitherto explored country
contiguous to Port Jackson. The map was reproduced in Watkin
Tench’s A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson,
State Library of NSW