Aboriginal activity at Pearl Bay

The rocks and inlets around Pearl Bay, as with much of those around Middle Harbour, or Warringa as it was known to the Indigenous people, were important sites of Aboriginal activity. The rocks and caves adjacent to the water are reminiscent of shelters and middens further around in Quakers Hat Bay, where there are seventeen recorded sites of Aboriginal artefact evidence, such as the image below of an eel rock engraving in Beauty Point.[1]

Coastal groups were described by British marine officer Lieutenant Tench as ‘wholly dependent for food on the fruit they gather, the roots they dig up in the swamps and the fish they pick up along the shore, or contrive to strike from their canoes with spears.’[2]

[1]Mosman Municipal Council, and Australian Museum Business Services, Aboriginal Heritage Study of the Mosman Local Government Area, p. 81.

[2] Tench W, Sydney’s First Four Years, being a reprint of A Narrative of the Expedition to Bottany Bay and A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, Fitzhardinge, LF (ed). (Library of Australian History in assoc. with Royal Australian Historical Society, Sydney): p. 80-81; Cited in Mosman Municipal Council and Australian Museum Business Services, Aboriginal Heritage Study of the Mosman Local Government Area, p. 25.