saltwater people
sydney’s northern beaches of the broken bays JOHN OGDEN
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saltwater people
sydney’s northern beaches of the broken bays John Ogden
Dedicated to Louise Whelan who has shown me the beauty, power and dignity of love.
In Honour of the Rights of Indigenous People
With deep respect we acknowledge the Guringai (Ku-ring-gai), the Gai-mariagal and the Cammeray (Cammeraygal) clan people of the Eora nation who, over tens of thousands of years, cared for the land and shore where we live and play. We also acknowledge the contemporary Aboriginal custodians of this land.
“I am forever walking upon these shores, Betwixt the sand and the foam,The high tide
visual spread + quote?
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w
e
will erase my foot-prints, And the wind will blow away the foam.”
Khalil Gibran 1883–1931
Mortuary warning and spelling discrepancies It is customary for some Indigenous communities not to mention names or reproduce images associated with the recently deceased. Members of these communities are respectfully advised that a number of people mentioned in writing or depicted in images in the following pages have passed away. Users are warned that there may be words and descriptions that might be culturally sensitive and not normally used in certain public or community contexts. In some circumstances, terms and annotations of the period in which a text was written may be considered inappropriate today.
A note on the text The spelling of Aboriginal words in historical documents is inconsistent, depending on how they were heard, interpreted and recorded by Europeans. As per standard academic practice, original spelling has been retained in quoted texts, while names and place names have been standardised, based on the most common contemporary usage and ability to best assist with the correct pronunciation of these names. The word ‘lore’ is used to describe a set of customary practices, ways of living, storytelling and tradition.
Title page Photo Oceaneye Previous spread Photo Jon Frank Right Rock carving of figure Opposite ????????????????? Overleaf Photo Oceaneye.
contents 22
14 foreword by Jeff McMullen
19 Introduction
78
the first people, the saltwater people
260
bohemians and blue bloods
37
the arrival of the first boat people
262
writers
306 sponsors
46
cetaceans
264
artists
307 acknowledgements
54
saltwater seafarers
265
photographers
64
outlaws
265
film & television
66
saltwater resistance
266
musicians
68
bushrangers
268
town planners and architects
313 artists
the ocean’s outlaws
272
future planing
314 photographers
274
the surfing tribe
274
world champions
71
the broken bays 82
manly and queenscliff
274
surfers’ surfers
114
freshwater and curl curl
286
northside surf media
134
dee why and long reef
274
surf magazines
146
collaroy, narrabeen and turimetta
274
surf photographers
274
surf filmmakers
293
courtesy in the surf
warriewood, mona vale and bongin bongin bay
158 168
bungan beach
294
global impact
176
newport beach
297
the future of surfing
190
bilgola beach
300
saltwater descendants
198
avalon beach
222
whale beach
238
palm beach
308 notes 312 bibliography 313 contributing writers 313 picture credits
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section title
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14
foreword Who are the Saltwater People? For tens of thousands of years, longer than anyone really knows, the clans of the Eora have been the Traditional Owners and Custodians of this glorious coastal land. Their name, derived from ee (yes) and ora (here, or this place) conveys the complex animist connection, the sense that they are of this land. Before Sydney Harbour existed it was a river valley, and the ancient coastline was much further towards the sunrise. The Saltwater People fished from canoes and hunted on land that is now deep beneath the sea. At the end of the last Ice Age, the ocean left the Barrenjoey Headland only thinly connected to one of the most dramatic peninsulas on earth. Wander the bushland, the mangrove creeks and tidal lagoons, along the sandstone cliffs and rock platforms, sit and listen to the sea in the hidden coves, on the sandy dunes or high on the rocky headlands covered with grass trees, angophoras and wind-blown scrub, and this country will speak to you. All of us who love this meeting place of land and sea are aware that we walk in the footsteps of the Ancestors. Around Broken Bay and much of the Sydney basin are
Previous page Bilgola. Photo Murray Vanderveer.
Above The last break c.1912. Photo by Frank Hurley. Carbon photograph 46x60.5cm. Courtesy the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
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hundreds of Australia’s most stunning galleries of rock art. Aboriginal people will tell you the stories in oral history fashion, and the totemic figures carved into the sandstone will detail the lizards, birds, kangaroos, echidnas, sharks, fish and whales that are part of this natural world. After you look out at Lion Island and the sweeping beauty from West Head, study closely the engravings of the mythic sky heroes and other symbols on the thousand-year-old rock galleries in the Ku-ring-gai National Park. Astronomers and Aboriginal people say that here is further indication that the sophisticated Indigenous knowledge system included an awareness of the planets and an ability to use the stars for navigation. John Romer, one of the greatest archaeologists of our age, warns us to focus on what we do know about the past and admit what is uncertain or has been erased. The impact of invasion, dispossession, violence and disease most certainly obliterated so much life and Culture here. The foundational work of Aboriginal historians, such as Professor Dennis Foley’s book, Repossession of our Spirit, with its striking photographs by Ricky Maynard, gives us a new way of seeing the Eora, far
more expansive than the colonial views of naturalists, amateur botanists, sailors and new settlers. The late Burnum Burnum’s Aboriginal Australia explains how Aboriginal art and storytelling has many layers of knowledge and deeper levels of meaning, sometimes veiled but always expressing the connectedness to the land and the life force. John Ogden has a particular gift to enrich the story of what we do know about the Saltwater People of the Broken Bays. More than three decades spent photographing Aboriginal life has given him a wonderful appreciation of the Eora way of seeing. His archival research in completing his landmark photographic book, Portraits from a Land Without People, opened up a treasure trove of knowledge. Living on this coastline he has experienced the way the environment calls and shapes us all, the Aborigines, the artists, the architects inspired by the drama of the natural beauty, and the surfers entranced by the endless waves. My son, Will, who was born here, has a particular way of expressing the gleam of the water on a day when all of life seems in balance. “These are the dolphin days.”
When the humpbacks are passing on their migrations and sometimes breach in extraordinary shows of their majesty and power we are all reminded of our place in the eternal scheme of Nature. This book reminds us of our responsibility. The most important word missing today from the Australian Constitution is Custodianship. It is a word of strength and beauty that can unite us and bind us to the ideal of what it means to be Australian. Custodianship is a central concept of both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge and gives everyone who lives in this land a responsibility to contribute to the balance of life. Custodians will look after this land and all its people for generations to come. This valuing of life, respect for all creatures, connects past, present and future. It unifies the descendants of the world’s oldest continuous Cultures with the newer arrivals from more than 230 other places. The land owns us all. Australia is our home. Jeff McMullen Whale Beach 2011
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Above North Head. Photo Oggy.
Opposite Photo Alex Marks
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“… they are far more happier than we Europeans, being wholy unacquainted not only with the Superfluous, but with the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe; they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquility which is not disturbed by the Inequality of Condition. The earth and Sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for Life. They covet not Magnificient Houses, Household-stuff, etc.; they live in a Warm and fine Climate, and enjoy every wholesome Air, so that they have very little need of Cloathing; and this they seem to be fully sencible of, for many to whom we gave Cloth, etc., left it carelessly upon the Sea beach and in the Woods, as a thing they had no manner of use for; in short, they seem’d to set no Value upon anything we gave them, nor would they ever part with anything of their own for any one Article we could offer them. This, in my opinion, Argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life, and that they have no Superfluities.” James Cook, 1770
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introducion
The east coast of Australia was the last piece of the puzzle for the European explorers mapping the ‘newly discovered’ Great Southern Land. After the Dutch had completed much of the hard work charting the continent’s immense coastline, HMS Endeavour arrived at arguably the most attractive and fertile shore of Terra Australis, and Lieutenant Commander James Cook promptly claimed all he surveyed in the name of the King of England. Cook apparently did not feel a need to consult with the Indigenous people about this development, although he had been requested to do so by the British Crown. Even if the esteemed mariner had taken the time to communicate with the locals, the Aborigines would have had difficulty comprehending the colonial concept of land ownership, as: “No two people could have been more different in their concepts of the world and the meaning of human life than Europeans and Aborigines.” 1 On Monday 7 May 1770, while navigating the coastline, James Cook wrote in the log of HMS Endeavour:
Little wind, Southerly, and Serene pleasant Weather. In the P.M. found the Variation by several Azimuths to be 8 degrees East; at sunset the Northermost land in sight bore North 26 degrees East; and some broken land that appear’d to form a bay bore North 40 degrees West, distant 4 Leagues. This Bay I named Broken bay ...2 Native Family. Artist Joseph Lycett c.1819. The National Library of Australia, Canberra. pic-an2962715-s13.
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Cook is recognised as an extraordinary hydrographer and explorer, not prone to making mistakes, but locating the present site of the Narrabeen Beach Surf Life Saving Club clubhouse in Broken Bay is regarded as one of his small errors.3 This was later corrected by Governor Arthur Phillip, and later again by Matthew Flinders … but perhaps Cook can be excused. Broken Bay is now usually only referred to as the area around the mouth of the Hawkesbury River, but at the time of first settlement by Europeans the whole region between North Harbour (Balgowlah) and Pittwater was known as Broken Bay. It is this broader sense of the name that I wish to employ when discussing the geography covered by the title of this book. Bookended by two impressive rock monoliths that are actually the tops of hills flooded at the end of the last ice age, these islands are now linked to the mainland by sand spits. With Car-rang-gel (North Head) guarding the entrance to Sydney Harbour and Barrenjoey (meaning ‘young kangaroo’) standing sentinel to the mouth of the Hawkesbury River to the north, this coastline forms a string of broken bays. The focus of Saltwater People of the Broken Bays is on the shoreline, that high-energy intersection between sea and land where waves, whipped up by wind and storms sometimes thousands of kilometres out to sea, pound the coast in a final dramatic explosion … or caress it with a gentle cascade or surge. This constant, hypnotic dance with the shore is repetitive but always changing. It can be calming, and it can be confronting. When a new swell arrives, excitement grows. The ocean becomes energised and the surf zone challenges us with its power and sense of danger. Like the Saltwater People—the coastal Aboriginal people before us—we are drawn to the ocean and its shoreline. It influences our lives, and in turn our presence affects this playground on the edge of the vast Pacific. When asked, few living in Sydney know about the Aboriginal people of the Eora nation who lived along the coast near what is now
Sydney Harbour for many millennia before the coming of the Europeans. There are also many misconceptions when asked about the culture of the first people. One common belief is that they were all somehow frightened of the ocean, but this is far from the truth. The Aboriginal clans along the northern beaches were true Saltwater People, at home not only in the sparkling estuaries and rivers, but also in the ocean waves. Theirs was a canoe culture, and they were known to take these craft out in large surf. They fished with spears, or lines and hooks, and would dive off rock ledges into the surf, re-emerge with lobster and abalone, and then ride a wave surge back onto the rock shelf. This part of our history has remained largely hidden, and it is important to reveal here the influence of our Aboriginal heritage, not only on the people of Sydney, but also on our national psyche. Considered to be one of the world’s most magnificent stretches of coastline, Sydney’s northern beaches were the birthplace of modern Australian beach culture. It is here that Australians witnessed the first ocean bathing, the development of swimsuits, the genesis of the surf life saving movement and the beginning of wave riding. Because of the quality of the surf beaches, many world surfing champions were either raised here or chose to make the area their home at some stage of their career. Some of the world’s best recognised painters, potters, writers, poets, photographers, filmmakers, musicians and architects also call the northern beaches home. Despite the perceived conservative image of many of its current citizens, the area was once a refuge for outlaws—escaped convicts, bushrangers, smugglers and illicit breweries. These broken bays have produced some truly unique individuals and some incredible stories. The European occupation of Australia began on the country’s edges, determined by the ships that connected us to the world, and 90 percent of the population has remained near the coast—the first
introduction
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point of contact. Ironically, Britannia may have ruled the waves and Britain considered a great maritime nation, but immersion in the ocean was a frightening thought to the early British mariners and colonists. As commander of the Nautilus, Captain Nemo said in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea:
The sea does not belong to despots. On its surface they can still exercise their iniquitous claims, battle each other there, devour each other there, transport every earthly horror. But thirty feet below the surface, their power ceases, their influence fades, their power vanishes.4 The sea was perceived as vexatious, even perilous, concealing monsters and predators.5 Shipwrecks and drownings were common. It would take many generations of waterpeople to turn the tide until we were as comfortable as the Aboriginal coastal people had been at play in the ocean. If we had listened, the Saltwater People could have taught us much about protecting these valuable resources. The British sense of destiny and belief in the supremacy of science subverted all else, blinding the colonialists to the environmental sustainability practised by the original custodians of the land. There is now a growing awareness that something is wrong, and that the modern world is out of balance. The natural beauty of the coast is under threat. It is obvious that the first people protected this country, and, as they did for many millennia before us, we need to think from the heart and preserve our shoreline for future generations.
Hollandia Nova detecta 1644: Terre Australe decouverte l’an 1644 by Melchisedech Thevenot. The State Library of New South Wales. Call number: MRB/ F910.8/T V. 1
the first people, 22
the
saltwater
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people
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“No two people could have been more different in their concepts of the world and the meaning of human life than Europeans and Aborigines.� Keith Willey, When the Sky Fell Down , 1979
Left Photo Nathan Smith Right Ian Faulkner