City’s ancient footsteps

The booklet is part of Eora Journey, the first major cultural project of Council’s Sustainable Sydney 2030, and was developed in response to the interest expressed by residents and visitors to Sydney in discovering more about the Aboriginal heritage of the city, both before and after invasion and white settlement. The city historian, Dr Lisa Murray, said: “It was the people’s request. They want to know more about it, and I am not surprised.”

With the oversight of the Council’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Panel, Dr Murray has been working on the project with panel members Millie Ingram, Donald Clark and Dillon Kombumerri; the NSW

Government Architects Office’s historian Laila Ellmoos and Aboriginal artist Adam Ridgeway.

From an original 255 sites identified as having particular historical association with Aboriginal people within the City of Sydney Local Government Area, the first edition of the Barani/Barrabugu booklet published last June includes 60 of them that have been arranged into four walking “journeys” through different inner-city suburbs.

Updates on the associated website are ongoing (www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/barani ). “We still have 12 to 18 months’ worth of downloads and updates to be done,” Dr Murray said. “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

The free booklet is available at Town Hall House and libraries and kiosks spread around the city.

In recognition of the size of the project, at its meeting on April 2, Council accepted the tender for a curator to oversee the development of Eora Journey. The successful tenderer will shortly be announced.