Just after sunset on Wednesday 30 May, the conference will officially open with a special event on the harbour. Gubbi Gubbi performers from the Sunshine Coast in Queensland and Sydney koori kids from the Tribal Warrior Indigenous Youth Mentoring Program will begin the event by lighting small fires which will then be taken to canoes and out into the harbour.

The event will evoke what the Gadigal and Wangal people who lived around Tumbulong had  done for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans in Sydney in 1788. These early colonists remarked how the harbour was always dotted with the lights of fires aboard canoes – mostly paddled by Aboriginal women who were the main fishers on the harbour waters.

The small fires – used by day and night – were carefully placed on rocks, clay or seaweed in the canoes. As Watkin Tench observed in 1788 ‘a canoe is seldom seen without a fire in it, to dress the fish by as soon as caught’.

Detail from Tupaia’s drawing of Aboriginal people paddling bark canoes, probably in Botany Bay, from the British Library.

The canoeists of the south-eastern coastline type of tied-bark canoes will use goinnia or narowang  - small paddles also made of bark. They were depicted as being used one in each hand – a style particular to Sydney and the south eastern NSW region. One good example of the use of these paddles can be seen in a drawing by Tupaia – the Tahitian who travelled with Cook’s Endeavour along Australia’s eastern coast in 1770.

As historian Keith Vincent Smith has shown, bark canoes were still used occasionally on Sydney Harbour into the mid-nineteenth century by the few Aboriginal people who had survived invasion and colonisation in Sydney.

The Nawi – exploring Australia’s indigenous watercraft conference runs over 2 days from 31 May to 1 June and will bring together canoe-makers, academics, museum workers and community members from all over Australia to discuss and debate the long maritime history of Australia’s First Peoples.

Gubbi Gubbi fire-making. Courtesy Gubbi Gubbi Dance Troop. http://www.gubbigubbidance.com/

At the opening event on Wednesday 30^th May, Gubbi Gubbi dancers will bring their yuar warrai  or song and dance and there will be canoes on the waters of Tumbulong for the first time in many years.

Bales of wool being loaded on board Magdalene Vinnen March 1933
Samuel J Hood Studio
ANMM Collection

The museum has developed this project, in association with Sydney Heritage Fleet, to exhibit an array of objects not available for viewing in the museum. Photographs depicting commercial shipping, sailing races and seaside workers adorn the walls. One example is an image of the visit of the German steel barque Magdalene Vinnen, highlighting the vibrant maritime scene of Woolloomooloo wharf in 1933.

Watercraft from the Australian Register of Historic Vessels (ARHV) seem to float on air, carefully poised in the foyer area. Social and cultural icons of Sydney Harbour such as skiffs, dinghies and rowing shells are featured. The 18-foot skiff Yendys, which was restored to its former glory between 1977 and 1982, appears majestic with its discernible anchor ensign emblazoned on its sails. Also displayed is a scale model of the hull and keel of Ben Lexcen’s ‘secret weapon’, Australia’s famous 1983 America’s Cup winner, Australia II.

Pyrmont and the waters surrounding it also contain a fascinating Indigenous cultural heritage, steeped in the traditions of the Gadigal people. Drawings from the early 1800s illustrate Aboriginal people using rock shelters under cliffs and cooking fish caught in bark canoes or nawi.

All these stories add to Australia’s diverse social and cultural history. They also allow more of the museum’s precious gems to be unveiled in a way that both captures the essence of our maritime past and inspires our imagination.

On 30 May, the museum is hosting the first conference on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander watercraft, Nawi.

For more information on the museum’s development of the ARHV, in consultation with Sydney Heritage Fleet, click here.

Nicole Cama, curatorial assistant

Yendys, 1924
restored 1977-1982
Sydney Heritage Fleet
Photographer: Zoe McMahon ANMM

Tank-test model 5854B scale model of hull and keel of Australia II 1981
ANMM Collection
Photographer: Zoe McMahon ANMM

Wharf 7 redevelopment
Photographer: Zoe McMahon ANMM