Eora

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Portrait of Bennelong, senior man of the Eora / Dharawal tribe

The traditional owners of the inner Sydney City region of Australia are the Cadigal people, one of the peoples who belong to the Eora language group^[1]. Their land south of Port Jackson stretches from South Head to Petersham. The word Eora (sometimes spelled Iora or Iyora) simply means "here" or "from this place". Local people used this word to describe where they came from to the British. "Eora" was then used by the British to refer to those Aboriginal people. The central Sydney region is still often referred to as "Eora Country".

Etymology

While some claim that Eora means "from here", others claim that "yura", meaning "man", gave the word Iyura or Eora.

Geography

The people described by British settlers as the Eora people were probably Cadigal people, the Aboriginal tribe of the inner Sydney region in 1788 at the time the first European settlers arrived. The Cadigal clan lived to the southwest of the Balmain peninsula, the Wanegal to the northwest, and the Cammeraygal on the present-day lower North Shore.

Language

The Eora language has been reconstructed from the many notes made of it by the original colonists, although there has possibly not been a continual oral tradition for over one hundred years. Some of the words of Aboriginal language still in use today are from the Eora (possibly Dharawal) language: dingo, woomera, wallaby,wombat, waratah, and boobook (owl).

Lifestyle

The Eora / Dharawal / Darug (coastal) people lived largely from the produce of the sea, and were expert in close-to-shore navigation, fishing, cooking, and eating in the bays and harbours in their bark canoes.The Eora were not farners. They did not grow or plant crops. The only "farming" they did was that the women picked herbs which they used in herbal remedies, medicine made from herbs (see wikipedia page "herbalism").The Eora would not wash at all. They would spend their whole lives covered in a mixture of fish oil, animal grease, sand, dust and sweat. The Eora had to wander the land in order to survive. This meant that each woman could only have one child each. They would use herbs to cause an abortion. If this did not work then the unwanted child would be killed shortly after birth. They were also very spiritual people. They believed that inside everything, no matter what it was, there was a living spirit inside it keeping it in existence and something could only really be gone from the world if the spirit inside was destroyed. They also believed that if land was taken away from them that all the spirits in that land would die.

Demise

When the First Fleet of 1300 convicts, guards, and administrators arrived in January 1788, the Eora numbered about 1500. A smallpox-like disease in conjunction with other germs and viruses along with the destruction of their natural food sources saw the Eora practically die out during the nineteenth century.

Bennelong

Bennelong, of the Eora tribe, served as a link between the British colony at Sydney and the Eora people in the early days of the colony. He was given a brick hut on what became known as Bennelong Point where the Sydney Opera House now stands. He traveled to England in 1792 along with Yemmerrawanie, and was presented to King George III on 24 May 1793. Bennelong returned to Sydney in 1795. His wife, Barangaroo has been commemorated in the renaming of an area on Darling Harbour.

Bennalong was one of the first aboriginal people to live with white people.

References

• Daniel Kurupt (gen. ed.) (1994). The Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia. Aboriginal Studies Press. ISBN 0-85575-234-3 (set). 

• N. Thieberger, W. McGregor (gen. eds.) Macquarie Aboriginal Words, section "Sydney language".
• http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Barani/main.html
• http://www.livingharbour.net/aboriginal/index.cfm