Sydney Elders
Continuing Aboriginal Stories
Uncle Dennis Foley
spent much of his early years growing up on his grandmother’s country on the northern beaches. Uncle Dennis works in education and has published a book on his country, Repossession of Our Spirit: Traditional Owners of Northern Sydney.
Gai-mariagal country
Northern Sydney
About this project‘My uncles catching fish’
I remember vividly my uncles catching fish at Collins Beach. They had a succession of boats, from the African Queen, which was an old clinker-style that weighed a couple of tonne, to modern aluminium boats. And we would fish that area and also snorkel there. It was once very good for crayfish and abalone. It’s a big seagrass area that goes right around to the front of the Quarantine Station. It is full of little fish, which is food for the penguins. But unfortunately it has been commercially fished right up until only recently, so the poor penguins have to go miles and miles out to sea.
Collins Beach, Manly, 1971, photo by EC O’Neill
‘The fringe camp’
The fringe camp was along Middle Creek on the western side of Narrabeen Lakes, where the fitness camp is nowadays. On average, there was about a dozen people living there, but in summertime it could grow to 80 people. They fished and went about their business. You can see the old clinker boat and the bloke at the back looks like Uncle Willy. They’d probably be up there putting in netting. When we were kids, Uncle Willy had a boat like that but it had a little one-cylinder putt putt. No reverse, just forward. Today, the Wakehurst Parkway cuts along at the back there, and because of the land clearing the creek has silted up.
Narrabeen Lakes, 1900–1910, photos by Star Photo Co
‘The shape of the land’
This is the way we were shown the landscape as kids. My grandmother and the other old aunties would tell me of the shape of the land before all the buildings and high-rises. You can see the freshwater pond, which later became the dairy, the odd fishing village, and you can see how isolated the northern beaches were. That’s why Aboriginal people survived here in such numbers up until the 1950s. The real settlement of the northern beaches happened after World War II. Roads and bridges got put in and places like this became holiday areas. It just blew out after that and it’s never stopped.
Views of Long Reef, Collaroy and Narrabeen Lakes, c1920–30, watercolours by John Cosh
Narrabeen Lagoon looking westwards, c1950s, photo by NSW Department of Education, Resource Services
Learning activities
Sydney EldersStage 2 History: Australia as a nation
How can oral histories help us to understand the lived experience of Indigenous people?
Read nowAboriginal Studies Years 7-10: Core Part 1 — Aboriginal identities
Students respond to the dynamic Aboriginal identities of elders from different areas of Sydney and learn how to conduct a case study in their own community.
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