Abstract
There is no question that settler colonists, who the Eora called Berewalgal, devastated the physical environment at Bondi and decimated the local Aboriginal people. Yet, alongside this account of early colonisation sit other representations. In this chapter, I highlight several competing representations, including on-going Eora occupation of the eastern suburbs, and rich descriptions of an alluring natural environment including dramatic cliffs, exquisite flora, exotic fauna and a shining beach that allegedly outshone any piece of art. A particular focus of this chapter is the debates around, and competing representations of, land grants to settler colonists at Bondi and their subsequent management of the beach which, by the mid-nineteenth century, was a popular destination for picnickers and, increasingly, bathers.
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Notes
- 1.
Peter Turbet, The Aborigines of the Sydney District Before 1788 (Sydney: Kangaroo Press, 1989), 3.
- 2.
Turbet, Aborigines of the Sydney District, 8.
- 3.
Tim Flannery, ‘The sandstone city’, in The Birth of Sydney (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1999), 88, and Grace Karskens, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010), 375–6 and 594 note 76. Historians debate the origins of smallpox. Some argue that it arrived in Sydney from Asia via a continental route, some with the First Fleet (variously as smallpox scabs or formites clinging to old clothing or variolous matter in surgeons’ chests), some with the French expedition (that landed at La Perouse). There are also debates about whether the British deliberately unleashed it in an act of genocide. Sydney identity Obed West claims that the Aborigines with whom he spoke said ‘they contracted the disease from the men of La Perouse’s ships’. ‘Old and new Sydney: XIX. Our harbour and ocean bays’, Sydney Morning Herald, 12 October 1882, 9. We have few records of how the Eora understood smallpox. Christopher Warren, ‘Smallpox at Sydney Cove—Who, when, why?’ Journal of Australian Studies, 38, 1 (2014), 68–86. Historians also refer to the first Australian war that began in the early 1790s, in which ten Aboriginal people died for every Berewalgal. Most of the fighting in this frontier war occurred on the Cumberland Plain and climaxed twenty years later in the Nepean District. Karskens, Colony, 123.
- 4.
Turbet, Aborigines of the Sydney District, 4, Karskens, Colony, 377, and Paul Irish, Hidden in Plain View: The Aboriginal People of Coastal Sydney (Sydney: NewSouth, 2017), 19.
- 5.
Irish, Hidden in Plain View, 21.
- 6.
Karskens, Colony, 49.
- 7.
David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales from its First Settlement in January 1788 to August 1801, Second Edition (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804), 8.
- 8.
Karskens, Colony, 554 note 8.
- 9.
Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 328 and 334–335. See also, Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu (Broome, Western Australia: Magabala, 2018), 3–4.
- 10.
Karskens, Colony, 51–52. See also Pascoe, Dark Emu, 5, 10 and 200.
- 11.
Irish, Hidden in Plain View, 21–22.
- 12.
Irish, Hidden in Plain View, 41, 45 and 69. Karskens similarly comments that Berewalgal did not ‘suddenly transform’ the Sydney region into ‘white space’. She notes that Eora women were still fishing from nowie, including at Bondi, in the 1830s. Colony, 33, 352 and 535.
- 13.
Irish, Hidden in Plain View, 34, 35–37, 39, 54, 67 and 76. See also Keith Vincent Smith, ‘Aboriginal life around Port Jackson after 1822’, Dictionary of Sydney (2011), http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/aboriginal_life_around_port_jackson_after_1822#page=11&ref=notes. Of course, stereotypes still prevailed. For example, in A Mother’s Offering to Her Children (Sydney: Gazette Office, 1841), which includes at least one reference to Bondi Beach, Charlotte Barton, paints unflattering pictures of Aboriginal people and their lives and relationships. See especially the chapters, ‘Wreck of the Charles Eaton’ and ‘Anecdotes of the Aborigines of New South Wales’.
- 14.
Irish, Hidden in Plain View, 41, 45, 84, 94, 105 and 125. See also 107. The Aboriginal names appear in a newspaper report dealing with a coroner’s inquest into a drowning at Bondi. ‘Coroner’s inquest’, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 December 1873, 6. Economic opportunities drew Aboriginal people to Sydney in greater numbers in the 1920s. Irish contends that by this time Aboriginal people with no coastal affiliation outnumbered those with coastal affiliations although most families at La Perouse mission had ancestral connections to the coast (134, 138 and 139). Interview with Aub Laidlaw, Bondi’s most famous beach inspector. Waverley Council Lifeguards Oral History Project, Waverley Library, 15 March 1989, 9–10, http://www.waverley.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/8259/AubLaidlaw1.pdf.
- 15.
Irish, Hidden in Plain View, 143.
- 16.
Karskens, Colony, 435.
- 17.
Irish, Hidden in Plain View, 143 and 148.
- 18.
See, for example, Sarah Nuttall, Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-Apartheid (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2009).
- 19.
Christine Metusela and Gordon Waitt, Tourism and Australian Beach Cultures: Revealing Bodies (New York: Channel View Publications, 2012), xxviii. See also, Lynette Russell, ‘Indigenous records and archives: Mutual obligations and building trust’, Archives and Manuscripts, 34, 1 (2006), 37, and Pascoe, Dark Emu, 86.
- 20.
Karskens, Colony, 360.
- 21.
Karskens, Colony, 428–429.
- 22.
Keith Vincent Smith, Mari Nawi: Aboriginal Odysseys (Sydney: Rosenberg, 2010), 9.
- 23.
Smith, Mari Nawi, 93. See also, John Ogden, Whitewash: The Lost Story of an African Australian (Avalon Beach, New South Wales: cyclops press, 2020), 113–115.
- 24.
John Ogden, Saltwater People of the Fatal Shore: Sydney’s Southern Beaches (Avalon Beach, New South Wales: cyclops press, 2012), 32 and 60. See also, Geoff Carter, Surfboard shooting in Australia, 1909–1940, Surfresearch, http://www.surfresearch.com.au/0000h_Aust_1900_1940.html#Walding_p3, and Michael Scott Moore, Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread From Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, With Some Unexpected Results (New York: Rodale, 2010), 3.
- 25.
Cited in Bernard Dowd and William Foster, The History of Waverley Municipal District (Sydney: Waverley Municipal Council, 1959), 138–139.
- 26.
Charles Steedman, Manual of Swimming: Including Bathing, Plunging, Diving, Floating, Scientific Swimming, Training, Drowning, and Rescuing (Melbourne: Henry Tolman Dwight, 1867), 265.
- 27.
Peter Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales; A Series of Letters, Comprising Sketches of the Actual State of Society in that Colony (Henry Colburn, London, 1827), 72 and 304.
- 28.
Louisa Meredith, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales, During a Residence in that Colony From 1839 to 1844 (London: John Murray, 1844), 46.
- 29.
Meredith, Notes and Sketches, 47.
- 30.
Karskens, Colony, 162 and 165.
- 31.
James Raymond (ed.), ‘Itinerary of roads: South Head Road’, The New South Wales Calendar and Post Office Directory, 1833 (Sydney: Stephens and Stokes, 1832), 86.
- 32.
Henry Halloran, ‘Bondi Bay’, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 16 June 1831, 4. See also, Henry Kendall, ‘Bondi’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 May 1863, 2.
- 33.
James Martin, ‘Bondi Bay’, The Australian Sketch Book (Sydney: James Tegg, 1838), 184, and F. S. Wilson, ‘Loose leaves from an Australian’s portfolio: Along the coast’, The Colonial Monthly (Melbourne: Clarson, Massina and Co., 1868), 23. Artistic representations of Bondi include Samuel Thomas Gill (Bondi Bay NSW, circa 1860), Frederick Schell (High Tide at Bondi, 1888), and Donald Commons (Coast at Ben Buckler, nd, first exhibited 1889).
- 34.
Halloran, ‘Bondi Bay’.
- 35.
Wilson, ‘Loose leaves’, 23–24. ‘Dooroonah’ waxed lyrical about his boyhood in Waverley in a poem which included the verse: ‘Here are the rocks where once my feet/With lightness skipped from crag to crag; The sandy beach and moss-bound flag/Where still the breakers mildly beat’. ‘Waverley: A retrospect’, Illustrated Sydney News, 15 May 1880, 10.
- 36.
Agnes Storrie, ‘Surf bathing’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 February 1905, 7.
- 37.
Karskens, Colony, 234.
- 38.
Meredith, Notes and Sketches, 56.
- 39.
Karskens, Colony, 251.
- 40.
Karskens, Colony, 250.
- 41.
Karskens, Colony, 251.
- 42.
William Roberts died in 1819 and the Bondi Estate passed into the hands of his wife and then sons.
- 43.
Roberts’ grant required him to ‘cultivate 30 acres’ within five years. He subsequently informed stockholders that they could graze their cattle on his ‘farm at Bundye’ for sixpence per head per week. ‘Horned cattle’, Advertisement, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 31 August 1811, 2.
- 44.
Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 2.
- 45.
Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 2.
- 46.
Clive Faro, ‘To the lighthouse! The South Head Road and place-making in early New South Wales’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 84, 2 (1998), 112.
- 47.
‘Government notice, 10 September 1830’, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 11 September 1830, 1.
- 48.
Dated 8 August 1831 but declared invalid on the basis of Hurd’s death.
- 49.
Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 10–12. Although Dowd and Foster do not trace the subsequent sales of Long’s property, they list the principal subdivisions that occurred over the following decades.
- 50.
Karskens, Colony, 225.
- 51.
Edward Smith Hall was publisher and proprietor of the Monitor (subsequently the Sydney Monitor) (1826–1842). For details see, J. A. Ferguson, ‘Edward Smith Hall and the Monitor’, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 17, 3 (1932), 163–200, Erin Ihde, Edward Smith Hall and the Sydney Monitor, 1826–1840 (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly, 2004), and Jenny Priestley, The Entwining Branches: A History of the O’Brien, Hall and Curlewis Families (St Ives, New South Wales: Jenny Priestley 1993). Speculating on the appeal of the location to Hall, Walter Bethel, who frequented the area as boy, believed that it must have emanated from a ‘deep love of the sea’ and a ‘wish to live within the sound of the music of its surf’. Walter Bethel, ‘Wild Waverley: Story of “Monitor Hall”’, Sun, 30 August 1930, 7.
- 52.
O’Brien’s first wife, Sophia, was one of Hall’s seven daughters by his first wife. They were married for less than two years before she died. O’Brien subsequently married Sophia’s sister and another of Hall’s daughters, Georgiana. She too died prematurely. Priestley, The Entwining Branches, 102 and 120.
- 53.
Priestley is the granddaughter of Lucius Ormond O’Brien, one of Francis’ six children born to his second wife Georgiana.
- 54.
Priestley , Entwining Branches, 100. Priestley says that O’Brien served on the Council for just one year, 1859, and did not stand for re-election due to the declining health of his wife.
- 55.
‘Bondi’, Advertisement, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 July 1852, 2.
- 56.
Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 43 and 44. The state subsequently acquired O’Brien’s blocks in North Bondi for military purposes. In 1929 the Commonwealth Defence Department leased the land to the Waverley Council, at £1 per annum, for the purpose of a public recreation ground. After rejecting one offer to lease the ground for a nine-hole golf course, the Council opened a golf link to the public in 1935; it extended them in 1936 (44, 166 and 168). O’Brien also purchased land elsewhere including Paddington. Priestley, Entwining Branches, 106.
- 57.
See, for example, the newspaper sources in Cameron White, Pleasure seekers: A history of the male body on the beach in Sydney, 1811–1914 (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2005), especially Chap. 1, Picnicking in the nineteenth century.
- 58.
Thomas Ormond was the third born child to Francis O’Brien and his second wife Georgiana. Thomas Ormond O’Brien, ‘Reminiscences of Bondi’, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 8, Supplement (1923), 365. See also, Desmond O’Brien, ‘Thomas Ormond O’Brien (1851–1940)’, in Priestley, Entwining Branches, 122.
- 59.
‘North Bondi Crescent’, Advertisement, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 26 June 1841, 4. For a map of the location see, Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 21.
- 60.
Evidence of the quarry is still apparent on the golf course, east of the fifth tee.
- 61.
Caroline Ford, The first wave: The making of a beach culture in Sydney, 1810–1920 (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2007), 65. For a map of the tramline, see Chap. 11, Autobiography. Reproduced from Walter Smith, ‘Treatment of drift-sand, as applied to the Bondi sand dunes’, Sydney University Engineering Society Journal, 7 (1902), 17–18.
- 62.
Star, 15 October 1863, reproduced in Priestley, Entwining Branches, 103.
- 63.
Thomas Ormond O’Brien, ‘Reminiscences of Bondi’, 364.
- 64.
Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 5.
- 65.
Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 5. Official maps reveal the extent of O’Brien’s holdings across Bondi. See, for example, Parish of Alexandria, County of Cumberland, First Edition (Sydney: Department of Lands, 1900).
- 66.
Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 5 and 129.
- 67.
Ford, First wave, 63.
- 68.
Ford, First wave, 64, note 41; Star, 15 October 1863.
- 69.
Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 129.
- 70.
Ford , First wave, 65 and 66. O’Brien’s wall followed the north-eastern boundary of Sir Thomas Mitchell Road and presumably intersected with the top of the cliffs at the current Notts Avenue.
- 71.
Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 129.
- 72.
‘The beach at Bondi’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 April 1881, 10.
- 73.
‘Law report’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 June 1885, 4.
- 74.
‘Law report’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 June 1885, 9.
- 75.
‘Law report’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 September 1886, 10.
- 76.
‘Law report’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 September 1886, 7.
- 77.
‘Law report’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 September 1886, 10.
- 78.
Ford , First wave, 43. Notwithstanding the contradictory words and actions of the WMC (see above), Ford ultimately concludes that the local council also appreciated the benefits of public recreational space (66).
- 79.
Ford, First wave, 120–121.
- 80.
See, for example, Douglas Booth, Australian Beach Cultures: The History of Sun, Sand and Surf (London: Frank Cass, 2001), Sean Brawley, The Bondi Lifesaver: A History of an Australian Icon (Sydney: ABC Books, 2007), and Leone Huntsman, Sand in Our Souls: The Beach in Australian History (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001).
- 81.
Karskens, Colony, 278.
- 82.
‘Sales by auction: North Bondi crescent’, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 26 June 1841, 4. See also, The Australian (Sydney), 3 July 1841, 3. The same advertisement also proclaimed that ‘nothing can exceed the beauty of the scene’ which ‘commands a view of the sea and the heads’.
- 83.
John Richard Houlding, ‘Joey Goosgog and Jasper Spindle’s trip to Bondi Bay in a pony chaise’, in Australian Tales and Sketches from Real Life (London: Sampson Low, Son and Marston, 1868), 38.
- 84.
Barton, Mother’s Offering, 166–168. At the beginning of this chapter, ‘Sea shells’, Lucy enters the drawing room with a basket of shells and tells her mother that she had collected them during ‘a delightful walk upon the beach’ (161). The name of the beach is not given.
- 85.
Houlding, Australian Tales, 46.
- 86.
Cameron White, ‘Picnicking, surf-bathing and middle-class morality on the beach in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, 1811–1912’, Journal of Australian Studies, 80 (2004), 102, and Karskens, Colony, 343. Historians of recreation and leisure in Australia make much of the argument that Macquarie sold the idea of South Head Road, and raised the funds for its construction by public subscription, as, in the words of the Sydney Gazette, ‘a beautiful avenue’ of recreation. For further details see, Faro, ‘To the lighthouse!’ 115–117.
- 87.
White, ‘Picnicking’, 102.
- 88.
White, ‘Picnicking’, 103.
- 89.
‘A young man …’, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 18 July 1818, 3.
- 90.
‘Death by drowning’, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 April 1850, 2.
- 91.
Houlding, Australian Tales, 38.
- 92.
White, ‘Picnicking’, 105. Ford also notes the increasing popularity of Bondi Beach in the 1860s, which she attributes in part to the first major extension of Bondi Road (initially named Government Road and then Waverley Street before being named Bondi Road in 1882). First wave, 95–96. By the early 1880s the press was reporting crowds of over 10,000 people at Bondi. See, for example, ‘The beach at Bondi’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 April 1881, 10.
- 93.
Booth, Australian Beach Cultures, 22–31.
- 94.
Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 138–139.
- 95.
Another group worthy of consideration about which little has been written are beach walkers. For a broad overview see Lesley Hawkes, ‘Walking the Australian beach: Mapping footprints in the sand’, in Elizabeth Ellison and Donna Lee Brien, Writing the Australian Beach: Local Site Global Idea (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 167–180. For Bondi specific content see, Ann Game, Andrew Metcalfe, Demelza Marlin, On Bondi Beach (Melbourne: Arcadia, 2013).
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Booth, D. (2021). Berewalgal and Colonisation. In: Bondi Beach. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3899-2_5
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