A short history of the Garigal clan

The story of the Garigal Clan of Pearl Beach and Patonga has been published by the Pearl Beach Aboriginal History Committee after wide reading and discussion of available material. The booklet is the committee's collective attempt to write a short history focused on the Garigal Clan of the Pearl beach and Patonga area. The booklet opens with an overview of the arrival of human beings on the Australian land mass to around 60,000 years ago. It then looks at what was happening at Pearl Beach 20,000 years ago. This is the first extract from the booklet that the Peninsula News will reproduce, with thanks to the Pearl Beach Aboriginal History Group. Twenty thousand years ago, water levels were more than 200 metres lower.

The Pearl Beach area was just a small part of an escarpment making up part of a valley wall to a river which ran to the sea 20 kilometres to the east.

Only with the gradual ending of the Ice Age and the slow melt of the vast ice sheets, about 19,000 years ago, did the ocean levels rise, resulting in flooded coastal plains where people could not live and a plethora of bays, inlets, estuaries, swamps, lagoons, beaches and islands.

Coastal people were forced to move with the moving coast line, towards higher ground and, in the case of Pearl Beach, to an area which had been, before sea level rise, about 200 metres up a valley defining escarpment.

Over this protracted period, the coastal aborigines had to adapt to the new environment as well as explain it, thus creating creation stories off-shore islands and mythical or spiritual ancestors.

It was not until about 7000 years ago that the sea level stopped rising, stabilised and many of the features were now recognise were formed.

Beaches began to appear where only rocky outcrops on the side of an escarpment had earlier been.

Large areas of land, such as Tasmania, which had been part of a similar language group, became cut off and isolated by rising seas.

For the Garigal Clan of the Pearl Beach-Patonga area, the geography was varied and less daunting with their surrounds dominated by a flooded river valley (Hawkesbury) and tributary river valleys (Ettalong, Pittwater, Cowan) joining to form an expansive Broken Bay surrounded by sheer cliff faces and punctuated with accumulating littoral (sandy) deposits which make up the flatlands and beaches of Ettalong, Umina, Pearl beach, Patonga and Palm Beach.

The Hawkesbury River lay between the local Garigal Clan and others on the southern side: the Cadigal, Burramattagal, Kameraigal and all the other clans which made up the wider language, the Eora.

In the newly-formed coastal area occupied by the Garigal and other clans, the natural environment became much more productive because the flooding of the sandstone valleys and ridges formed as sheltered inlets lined with mangrove swamps, coastal swamps, lagoons, and sheltered fertile riverside flats.

And so the environment of Pearl Beach and adjoining areas took shape, together, no doubt, with stories, myths and legends which explained the formation of the landmarks as the Garigal came to know them.

No doubt Lion Island, cut off from Middle Head at the end of the Patonga Ridge by the flooding of a low saddle of land, standing sentinel to the entrance of the Hawkesbury River, would have had spiritual significance.

M\t Ettalong overlooks the entire vista of sandy flatlands, headlands and outcrops, forested areas and intertwining waterways, all, no doubt, with associated stories, myths and legends.

Hawkesbury sandstone, laid down 200 million years ago when Australia, along with Antarctica was part of the southern super continent of Gondwana dominates the landforms of the Pearl Beach area.

It was formed from the silt and sand deposited by Antarctic rivers over a huge outwash plain during the millions of years making up the Triassic Period.

It occurred in such quantities over a million years, thus forming a sedimentary layer more than a kilometre thick.

Following the breakup of Gondwana and Australia's migration northward this massive deposit of sandstone was up-lifted and then slowly eroded into the distinctive plateaux, cliffs, gorges and valleys we can see today.

The sandstone expanse extends from the south of Sydney, west to the Blue Mountains, and north to Newcastle.

The sandstone is easily eroded and thus produces the distinctive shapes, sheer drops, outcrops and varied sculptured shapes.

This is the environment which dominated the country of the Aboriginal people of Pearl Beach and Patonga, the Garigal clan.

As the rising ocean advanced 15,000 years ago, the water gradually flooded low lying areas, the eroded sandstone plateau retreated, leaving steep cliffs, headlands, separating sandy beaches and deep inlets where rivers flowed down to meet the advancing sea.

The eroded material from the plateaus was swept along by seasonal ocean currents and winds forming sandy beaches, high sand dunes, lower fore dunes and, behind these, lagoons and swamps.

The eroded sandstone became carved into caves and overhangs which provided shelter for the people and at the foot of the headlands extensive rock platforms valuable for fishing were formed.

Booklet, 21 Dec 2016

The Garigal Clan of Pearl Beach and Patonga