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Aboriginal place names around Port Jackson
The Aboriginal place names used in the exhibition on the map of Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) come from manuscripts dated between 1790 and 1798. One of these manuscripts, Vocabulary of the language of NSW (Native & English), was written by Second Lieutenant William Dawes, a marine surveyor who came with the First Fleet in January 1788 and returned to England in December 1791. Most of the place names listed here come from the other document, Vocabulary of the language of NSW (Native and English, but not alphabetical) 1790-1792, which is attached to Dawes' manuscripts, and has recently been attributed to Governor Arthur Phillip, Judge-Advocate David Collins and Captain John Hunter. Apart from William Dawes, who we know gained much of his information about the language of coastal Sydney directly from Aboriginal people (in particular a woman, Patyegorang) Aboriginal sources are not given for the place names listed in most documents. However, a comment by Captain Watkin Tench suggests that place names in Vocabulary 1790-1792 may have come from Arabanoo, a manwho was originally called ‘Manly' by the British. Other place names are mentioned in later documents. By the 1820s few of the original inhabitants of the shores of lower Port Jackson remained in the area, and most people who camped around these shores from this time on appear to be from other areas. It is possible that some names recorded in documents written after 1820 were provided by people who did not speak the Port Jackson dialects, and who perhaps gave these places their own names. The names recorded are principally those of the bays and headlands and other landscape features around the shorelines. There would have been Aboriginal names for places in all parts of the country. Those place names that were recorded may simply reflect the focus of interest for the first British surveyors and administrators as they were mapping the country.
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