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Canoes - noe, nowey



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'The birds skimming across the water's surface are Black Swans. The trees are all Eucalypts, except for the one under which two men are standing - this is a Casuarina. In the foreground, we can see one of the bark canoes that the people of Port Jackson use; in the background we can get a sense of the size of these canoes by the two people that are within one [on the water]; further away we can see a man transporting one of these canoes on his head.'
Artist: CA Lesueur
Engraver: Fortier
New Holland: New South Wales
Published as Plate 34 in Peron, F & de Freycinet, L (1824) Voyage de D´couvertes aux Terres Australes, ...1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804. Atlas. 2nd edn. Arthus Bertrand, Paris.
Reproduced with permission from the Australian Museum Library.
Translation from French by Maud Page.

Canoes were used for travelling around the Harbour and its tributaries as well as out beyond the Harbour heads. Small bark paddles, called goinnia or narowang were about 60 to 90 centimetres long and were used to propel the canoes. The canoes ranged in length from 2.5 to 6 metres.

Canoes were an essential part of fishing, particularly for the women who sat in them using their hooks and lines. Men either stood up in the canoes to throw their fizz-gigs or laid across the canoes so they could see into the water.

A small fire was kept alight on a bed of clay or seaweed in the canoes. This kept the men and women warm during cold weather and also allowed for the cooking of fish while in the canoe if they got hungry.

No bark canoes from the Sydney region survive. Two of the canoes were made for the Australian Museum for display purposes in the 1930s by an Aboriginal man, Mr A Woodlands, a Danghetti man, from West Kempsey on the NSW north coast.

'The canoes in which they fish are as despicable as their huts, being nothing more than a large piece of bark tied up at both ends with vines. Their dexterous management of them, added to the swiftness with which they paddle and the boldness that leads them several miles in the open sea, are, nevertheless, highly deserving of admiration. A canoe is seldom seen without a fire in it, to dress the fish by as soon as caught.'

Captain Watkin Tench, 1788

'Where have you gone? The tide is over you,
The turn of midnight water's over you,
As time is over you, and mystery,
And memory, the flood that does not flow.'

'Five Bells', Kenneth Slessor

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