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NYE Welcome to Country illuminations
On New Years Eve 2015, a specially choreographed Welcome to Country was projected on to the pylons of Sydney Harbour Bridge, making the entire structure a message of hope for…
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Moore Park Engraving
Author: Paul Irish and Tamika Goward On a slab of sandstone just outside Centennial Park there were once some Aboriginal engravings. Rock engravings were produced when Aboriginal people carved them…
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St Mary’s Cathedral Hatchet
Author: Paul Irish and Tamika Goward An Aboriginal stone axe head, also called a ‘ground-edge hatchet’, was found in a road cutting behind St Mary’s Cathedral in 1876. The hatchet…
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Captain Cook landing
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Waterloo Town Hall & Library
Waterloo Town Hall was converted to a library in the early 1970s. The Koori Collection is a dedicated Aboriginal history collection held at the library which was officially launched in…
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Redfern Park
Redfern Park was the site of a speech given by the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating on 10 December 1992, to launch the Year of the Indigenous Person. Subsequently…
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Land Rights
Along with the protection of children, and the right to vote and be counted, Aboriginal people also mobilised politically around land rights throughout the 20th century. Sydney had seen protests…
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Aboriginal Medical Service
Author: Lily Thomas-McKnight The Aboriginal Medical Service Cooperative Ltd (AMS) was opened on 20 July 1971 at 171 Regent Street, Redfern to provide free medical support to Aboriginal people in…
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St David’s Hall
The Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA) was an all-Aboriginal political organisation formed in Sydney in 1924 by Fred Maynard. He had been involved in the Coloured Progressive Association, a group…
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Bangarra Dance Theatre
Bangarra Dance Theatre is a dance company formed in 1989 by staff and students of National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association (NAISDA), including Carole Johnson who had been involved with…
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Boomalli
Boomalli is an artist-run cooperative which was formed in 1987 by a group of 10 urban Aboriginal artists working across a range of media from painting and photography to sculpture…
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Black Theatre
Author: Lily Thomas-McKnight Black Theatre began informally in c1970 as a small group of Aboriginal people who came together to read scripts and poems. These reading groups soon expanded into…
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Australian Hall
This was where Aboriginal rights activist Jack Patten read the resolution on citizenship rights at the Day of Mourning Conference on 26 January 1938, which only Aboriginal people were allowed…
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The Domain and Royal Botanic Gardens
Author: Paul Irish The Governor’s Domain has been a public space since the earliest days of the Sydney colony, and continued to be used for many years by Aboriginal people.…
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Hyde Park South
Until the mid-1820s, Aboriginal people travelled from all over Sydney, and as far away as the Hunter and the Illawarra, to gather at a ceremonial contest ground to the south…
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Bennelong Point / Dubbagullee
Bennelong Point / Dubbagullee, the peninsula on the eastern side of Sydney Cove, was the site of a brick hut built for Bennelong by Governor Arthur Phillip in 1790. Within…
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Sheas Creek (Alexandra Canal) Alexandria
Author: Paul Irish and Tamika Goward At Beaconsfield in the 1890s, workers on the Alexandra Canal began cutting through the sediments of Shea’s Creek and made some remarkable discoveries. The…