Spit East and the story of the Harbour Whaler Shark

Rounding along the path past the Spit Marina and under Spit Bridge lies Spit East. It would have been this aspect which greeted European settlers when they first explored Mosman’s coves and inlets in Middle Harbour. The sand spit, called Burra Bru by the Aboriginals, was first spotted by net fisherman in April 1788.[1], [2] Jacob Nagle, an American soldier and sailor who journeyed on the First Fleet as an able seaman, wrote in his diary that ‘one night shooting the [seine] at the head of Middle Harbour, as we supposed, and shifting a long a rising sandy beach towards the north side, we found a narrow entrance, and going over the bank of sand, we discovered an other brand running to the westward, full of coves.’[3]

Burra Bru and the water in the Spit is associated with the Gamaragal story of the harbour whaler shark and people known as ‘the Gubjas’.[4] These people were ‘dangerous, hairy, [and] little,’ forever on the prowl for solitary Gamaragal to harm.[5] The Sand spit is believed to be the area in which the harbour whaler shark came into existence and where ‘our people fought a tenacious battle with the Gubja from ridge top to ridge top, and beach to beach between these narrow points. Here the shark was born… A killer, an evil animal. This is black water.’ [6] It is from this story that Aboriginal children were not allowed to enter the water around the Spit, as it was believed that ‘The water between Clontarf Beach and Parriwi Head and to the west is evil.’[7]

[1] Mosman Municipal Council, and Australian Museum Business Services, Aboriginal Heritage Study of the Mosman Local Government Area, p. 24.

[2] Souter, Mosman, p. 10.

[3] Jacob Nagle, The Nagle Journal, ed. John C. Dann (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1988), cited in Souter, Mosman, p. 10.

[4] Mosman Municipal Council, and Australian Museum Business Services, Aboriginal Heritage Study of the Mosman Local Government Area, p. 56.

[5] Mosman Municipal Council, and Australian Museum Business Services, Aboriginal Heritage Study of the Mosman Local Government Area, p. 56.

[6] Dennis Foley, Repossession of Our Spirit: Traditional owners of Northern Sydney, (Canberra: Aboriginal History Inc., 2001): p. 95, cited in Mosman Municipal Council, and Australian Museum Business Services, Aboriginal Heritage Study of the Mosman Local Government Area, p. 56.

[7] Foley, Repossession of Our Spirit, p. 90, cited in Mosman Municipal Council, and Australian Museum Business Services, Aboriginal Heritage Study of the Mosman Local Government Area, p. 56.