1920s

‘Black Lucy’ lives in Milling Street Gladesville until she dies in late 1920s. She is referred to by Europeans as the last (traditional) member of the Gamaraigal tribe and is buried in the Field of Mars Cemetery.

About a dozen girls from the Cootamundra Training Home for Aboriginal Girls are placed in North side homes as domestic servants. They looked after small children or worked in the kitchens and seldom had any contact with their families or friends from Cootamunda.

  • Many Koori families, and Koori domestic servants, were cooking on stoves like this in 1920

A Koori camp exists near the present Warringah Golf Course. People eat both traditional and European foods, (Dennis Foley, oral history).

  • Seafood supplemented Koori diets well into the twentieth century
  • Oysters, Burns Bay
  • Fish were a staple of both European and Koori diets in the 1920s

1924

Bob Waterer is born in Bayview to Harriet Godbold and Albert Waterer a soldier born in England. Bob is Bungaree’s great great great grandson, Bob later lives in Brookvale and is a baker.

  • Bob Waterer
  • Bob Waterer's family tree: descendants of Bungaree and Matora

The Royal Far West Children’s Health Scheme is founded by Reverend Stanley Drummond. In the summer of 1925, 58 children from Bourke, Brewarrina and Wilcannia, accompanied by half a dozen mothers arrive in Cronulla.

1925

Father Browne, a Jesuit priest, visits people whom he identifies as ‘Aborigines’ at Middle Harbour, Spit and publishes two photographs. The site is probably Quakers Hat Bay, near the Spit.

  • Quakers Hat Bay
  • Aboriginal family at Middle Harbour 1924, courtesy of Father O'Donnell, Dublin
  • Aboriginal children at Middle Harbour 1924, photographed by Father Browne, courtesy Fr. O'Donnell
  • Beauty Point, near the Spit, probably the second last town camp to be cleared or abandoned in north coastal Sydney
Location: 
Quaker’s Hat Bay, Beauty Point, Site of a Koori town camp until the 1920's

1926

The Royal Far West camp is held in Manly, next door to the private hospital of Dr Montcrieff Barron. It gradually evolves from holiday camp to health care provider.

1928

The last known fluent speaker of the Guringai language dies in Ryde. (Jacobs 2007, p. 26)

1929

A number of young women from the Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls Training Home are working for very little pay as domestic servants.