The Story Of Djeebahn: The Bay of the Whales and the Creation Serpent

By Les Bursill

The story of Djeebahn is the story of the place called Port Hacking NSW. It is the story of the Original People the Dharawal and why and where they lived in and around the Bay. It has a series of photos of traditional Dreaming Stories and in particular the story of the interaction of the Dharawal with Killer Whales who from time to time in the past, came into the Bay. The book also contains examples of traditional Bush Tucker and a list of Dharawal words and phrases. This book is unique. There is no other example of this type before this book was published in 2013. The world we take so much for granted today has little resemblance to the world of our distant ancestors. This is most apparent in Australia. The first people to arrive in Australia some 50,000 years ago would have found a country much cooler and wetter than the Australia of 21st century. Australia was dominated by unfamiliar plants, animals and landform. People arriving here 50,000 years ago would have left the lush tropical world around Indonesia and entered the less abundant forests of Acacia and marsupial mammals of sub-tropical Australia. They would have confronted a range of “Mega Fauna” or giant animals found nowhere else on earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9780987072757

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Corrections

Preamble.

The art images and descriptions of Aboriginal behaviours or practices described here are drawn from research I completed in December 1992. My first wife, Barbara Bursill assisted me with some analysis of site occupation rates.

The map below, prepared by Will Newton in 1992 shows the areas of my research and the areas of those others who worked in this area of Southern Sydney.

The map also shows the possible routes of seasonal travel used by the Clans of the Dharawal speakers in their seasonal round of Fishing, Hunting, Gathering and Ceremony.

In the Beginning

The world we take so much for granted today has little resemblance to the world of our distant ancestors. This is most apparent in Australia. The first people to arrive in Australia some 50,000 years ago would have found a country much cooler and wetter than the Australia of 21st century.

Australia was dominated by unfamiliar plants, animals and landform. People arriving here 50,000 years ago would have left the lush tropical world around Indonesia and entered the less abundant forests of Acacia and marsupial mammals of sub-tropical Australia. They would have confronted a range of Mega Fauna or giant animals found nowhere else on earth.

When sea levels fell during the Pleistocene ice age, including the last glacial maximum, the Sahul Shelf was exposed as dry land. Evidence of the shoreline during this time has been identified in locations which now lie 100 to 140 metres below sea level. The exposed area formed a land bridge between Australia, New Guinea and the Aru Islands and these lands share many marsupial mammals, land birds and freshwater fish as a result. Lydekker’s Line, a biogeographical line, runs along the edge of Sahul Shelf where it drops off into the deep waters of the Wallacea biogeographical area. Wallace’s Line sits in a gap between the Sahul Shelf and the Sunda Shelf, part of the continental shelf of Southeast Asia.

Australia would have been so foreign to the new arrivals that most likely they would have been unable to successfully hunt or collect plant foods, they would have been forced to rely entirely on products of the sea or sea shore. Those foods at least would be similar to what they had always eaten.

The world of 50,000 years ago was one where the northern and southern ice-caps held vast amounts of frozen water, sufficient to reduce the levels of the seas some 140 meters from today’s levels. This reduction left exposed large amounts of coastal area covered by water today. After arriving on the coast of northern Australia the new colonists gradually started to adapt to their new land, first moving around the coastline, their number grew and then eventually they ventured inland following the river systems to take up area around lakes and along the shores.

Not only was Australia a foreign land with its strange animals it was also a wetter, cooler and much larger area than today. The centre of Australia would have been covered with substantial shallow lakes filled with fish and crustaceans. Added to these differences, the shoreline of Australia was generally many kilometers further out towards the Continental shelf than it is at present (see the map on the previous page).

30,000 years before the common era (BCE) Aboriginal people first arrived here in the Sydney region, these people found a land full of edible plants, large placid animals and abundant sea foods, fish, shellfish and marine mammals. It’s reasonable to imagine that these people would have numbered only a few dozen, perhaps even just a few large family clans. Certainly enough to guarantee continuity of occupation.

That first group of travelers were not the people who occupy the area of Sydney found by Phillip in 1788. It is unlikely that any of the Aboriginal people of the Sydney basin alive today descend from those first arrivals in the area. Evidence depicted in the paintings and drawings of the people around Sydney tells of a number of clans that for some time thrived and survived in the Sydney basin, butaround 3,000 years ago either they moved away or died out due to the ever present cycles of flood, drought or fire that we know of today.

Throughout the world it seems to be common phenomena that societies/communities rise and fall over time. So it is reasonable to expect that cycle to occur here also. We can assume that these pre communities used tools, weapons and practiced hunting and gathering activities that would be familiar to those people we call the Dharawal speakers. The recent forms of Paintings, Engravings, Drawings and Stenciling (PEDS) are a product of the Dharawal people