Colbee (Colebee) – The Cadigal Man Kidnapped with Bennelong at Manly – c.1755 to c.1806

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names and images of people who have died.

Colbee (Colebee, Coleby or Coalby) was a senior Cadigal man from the south side of Sydney Harbour. On a November day in 1789 he was grabbed off the beach at Manly with Bennelong and dragged to Sydney on Governor Phillip's orders. Within weeks he'd slipped his shackle and got away, still wearing an iron ring round his leg. He was there at the whale feast at Manly in 1790 when Phillip was speared. He made his own peace with the Governor, went exploring with the officers out to the Hawkesbury, and turns up again and again in the journals of Watkin Tench and David Collins until he fades from the record after 1806. He's often lost in Bennelong's shadow, and he's often mixed up with two other men of the same name, including the Colebee of Richmond who was given land at Blacktown in 1816. This page tells what the sources say about Colbee himself, and where they're thin I'll say so.

Colebee, drawn by convict artist Thomas Watling some time between 1792 and 1797. Thomas Watling, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Was Colbee?

Colbee was Cadigal (Gadigal). The Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) says his Country "ran along the eastern shores of Port Jackson, from South Head to Darling Harbour", and Keith Vincent Smith in the Dictionary of Sydney puts it in "the present eastern suburbs of Sydney". Colbee said it himself. On an expedition in 1791 Tench heard him call out to strangers in the bush, "I am Colbee, of the tribe of Cadigal."

Tench liked the sound of the name. He wrote that it was "pronounced exactly as Colby is with us", and the convict artist Thomas Watling said it was a common name around Sydney. Midshipman Newton Fowell of HMS Sirius wrote his full names down as "Gringerry Kibba Coleby". Smith explains that "Gringerry" referred to the cuts across a man's chest, and that "Kibba", meaning a rock or stone, marked a man who'd had a front tooth knocked out at initiation. Daniel Southwell called him "Kebada Colby". Smith thinks his totem was probably the white-bellied sea eagle, which Watling recorded in a caption as goo-le-be.

He was a man of standing. Fowell called him "the principal one of the two" captives. The ADB says Bennelong, who was about ten years younger, treated him "with deference", and historian Keith Vincent Smith describes him as a "chief" of the Gadigal.

Tench guessed he was "perhaps near thirty" in 1789, "considerably shorter" than Bennelong and "not so robustly framed, though better fitted for purposes of activity". Both men had survived the smallpox epidemic of 1789, but "Colbee's face was very thickly imprinted with the marks of it."

Kidnapped at Manly – November 1789

By late 1789 Governor Phillip still hadn't managed to open proper contact with the Eora. He'd already tried kidnapping one man, Arabanoo, and now he decided to take two more. Lieutenant William Bradley's boat crew went down to Manly Cove and, as Tench put it, "completely succeeded in trepanning and carrying off, without opposition, two fine young men". Bradley painted the scene himself.

Back at Sydney two Aboriginal children already living in the settlement, Nanbaree and Abaroo, recognised the men straight away and called them by name: "Baneelon, and Colbee". Neither of the captives was much comforted. Tench described "the same scenes of awkward wonder and impatient constraint" he'd seen with Arabanoo. Phillip ordered that they be treated kindly "and guard them strictly". Wikipedia's article says they were shackled in a guarded hut near the Governor's house.

'Taking of Colbee and Bennelong 25 November 1789', painted by William Bradley, who led the boat crew. William Bradley, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Escape

Colbee didn't hang about. Tench says he "contrived to effect his escape in about a week, with a small iron ring round his leg". Bennelong nearly went with him: "Had those appointed to watch them been a moment later, his companion would have contrived to accompany him." Smith gives a more exact date, the night of 12 December 1789, and says Colbee "pulled the rope from his leg shackle and ran off into the bush". Bennelong stayed behind and charmed his captors until he escaped too, months later.

Bennelong, Colbee's fellow captive, drawn in 1798. James Neagle, 1798, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Tench also noticed that, unlike Bennelong, "Colbee would not at first touch" spirits.

The Whale Feast at Manly – September 1790

The next time the British saw Colbee he was back at Manly. In early September 1790 a dead whale had washed up and a big crowd had gathered for the feast. Officers who landed there found Bennelong, thin and bearded, and "soon after Colbee came up, pointing to his leg, to show that he had freed himself from the fetter which was upon him". Tench says Colbee gestured at the stinking whale and made signs that "it was common among them to eat until the stomach was so overladen as to occasion sickness".

Governor Phillip hurried down to Manly on 7 September 1790 to meet them. Tench says Bennelong and Colbee talked with him for some time. Then a stranger, a man "seemingly a stranger, and but little acquainted with Baneelon and Colbee", threw a spear that hit the Governor in the right shoulder. Smith's Dictionary of Sydney entry names him Willemering, a carradhy (healer or clever man) from Broken Bay. The ADB says plainly that Colbee "took part in the whale feast at Manly in September 1790 when Governor Phillip was speared". Afterwards the boat crew reported that "Baneelon and Colbee had just departed, after a friendly intercourse", and that they "pretended highly to disapprove the conduct of the man who had thrown the spear".

Whatever was really behind the spearing, it opened the door. Within weeks Bennelong came in to Sydney, and on 18 October 1790, Smith writes, Colbee met Phillip "at the next cove" (probably Farm Cove) "to conclude a separate peace agreement and to receive a metal hatchet."

The spearing of Governor Phillip at Manly Cove, by the Port Jackson Painter. Colbee was there that day. Port Jackson Painter, c.1790, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The 2006 plaque at Manly Cove that marks Willemering's spearing of Governor Phillip. Pilotwriter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Living Between Two Worlds

From late 1790 Colbee was one of the two leading Aboriginal men in the life of the settlement. The ADB lists what he did. He went as guide and go-between on Phillip's journeys inland, helped recover gear from an overturned fishing boat in the harbour, and led a lost soldier back to the settlement, and he was rewarded for it. He sometimes dined at Government House, and Wikipedia, citing historians Jakelin Troy and Keith Vincent Smith, says he was living in the settlement three or four days a week.

Sydney Cove in about 1792, by the Port Jackson Painter. Colbee spent three or four days a week in the town around this time. Port Jackson Painter, 1792, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

He wasn't everyone's idea of a loyal helper, though. In December 1790 Phillip's gamekeeper John McEntire was speared near Botany Bay. Colbee came to the hospital with others, and they named the spearman as "Pimelwi", that is Pemulwuy. The ADB says he later promised to bring Pemulwuy in and didn't. Phillip, in a passage Tench printed, was openly annoyed: "Colbee, in the room of fulfilling his engagement, is loitering about the lookout house."

Tench kept a few lighter moments too. When Colbee saw the cows that came out on the Gorgon, he asked whether they were kangaroos. The first time he saw a monkey he called it wurra, a rat. Then he looked at its paws and cried out in alarm, mulla, a man.

Out to the Hawkesbury – April 1791

In April 1791 Phillip set out to work out whether the Hawkesbury and the Nepean were the same river. The party was twenty-one strong, among them the Governor, Collins, Surgeon White, Lieutenant Dawes, Tench himself, and "our friends Colbee and Boladeree". Bennelong wanted to go, "but his wife would not permit it", a nice glimpse of Barangaroo. Colbee "would listen to no objections". His only condition, Tench says, "with great care and consideration", was that his wife and child stay at Sydney under British protection and be given food while he was away.

Out west Colbee was a long way from home and knew it. Asked who lived inland, he named the Boorooberongal and said they were bad, and that they lived on birds and animals, "having no fish". When the party heard voices in the night, it was Colbee who gave "a loud hollow cry" of invitation. A man with a lit stick came forward and the introductions were made. "I am Colbee, of the tribe of Cadigal." "I am Bereewan, of the tribe of Boorooberongal." Colbee took Bereewan by the hand and led him in to the fire.

Later, on the river, they met a man named Gombeeree and a man and boy from a canoe, Yellomundee and Deeimba. Tench watched a healing ceremony in which Yellomundee sucked at Colbee's chest and seemed to draw something out. Colbee assured the officers that "two splinters of a spear by which he had been formerly wounded" had been taken out, and that he felt much better for it. Tench couldn't see any wound and put it down to imagination.

Anyone who knows the Hawkesbury story will notice those names. The ADB says Maria Lock's father was Yarramundi and her grandfather was Gomebeeree, and Maria's brother was the other Colebee I come to below. Whether Tench's Gombeeree and Yellomundee were the same men, I can't say from the sources I've read.

The north arm of Broken Bay, drawn by William Bradley in 1789. The officers' early journeys north and west took them, and their guides, well beyond Cadigal Country. William Bradley, c.1802, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Daringa and Their Children

Colbee's first wife was Daringa. Smith says she was a half-sister of Moorooboora, leader of the clan whose lands covered present-day Maroubra. Aiesha Saunders of Museums of History NSW writes that her name may come from daringyan, stingray, and that she was a fisherwoman, like her friend and namesake Barangaroo.

In December 1790, Smith writes, Daringa walked out to the Botany Bay area to have her baby, a girl called Panieboolong (Paniebollong). A couple of days later she and Colbee brought the baby, wrapped in paperbark, to show Phillip, and the family slept the night in the Governor's house. Elizabeth Macarthur wrote to a friend in England in March 1791: "Mrs. Coleby, whose name is Daringa, brought in a new born female infant of hers, for me to see … The child thrives remarkably well and I discover a softness and gentleness of manners in Daringa truly interesting."

Smith also tells two hard stories about that baby. One night she rolled out of her mother's arms into the fire and two of her toes were burnt. And at Phillip's request Colbee and Daringa showed him the malgun custom, in which the top of a girl's little finger was bound until it came away. Tench saw the baby at about a month old: "The little wretch seemed in pain, and her hand was greatly swelled." Panieboolong died at about five months old.

In May 1791 a convict was caught stealing Daringa's fishing tackle, and Phillip had him flogged in front of the Eora. Tench wrote that "Daringa shed tears", while Barangaroo grabbed a stick and threatened the flogger.

Elizabeth Macarthur, who met Daringa and her new baby and wrote about them in March 1791. Unidentified painter, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1795 Daringa had another child and died a few months later, most likely of tuberculosis according to Saunders. Collins describes what happened at her grave: "When the body was placed in the grave, the bye-standers were amazed to see the father himself place the living child in it with the mother. Having laid the child down, he threw upon it a large stone, and the grave was instantly filled in by the other natives." Colbee explained that without Daringa, there was no one to feed the baby and it would starve.

Before she died, Daringa had a hand in one of the great ceremonies of early Sydney. At the 1795 initiation at Farm Cove, Smith says, she gave Collins the front teeth taken from three boys, and asked that the tooth of Nanbarry, Colbee's nephew, be sent to Surgeon White, who had been the boy's guardian.

Thomas Watling's drawing of the 1795 initiation ceremony near Sydney, which centred on Nanbaree, Colbee's nephew. Thomas Watling, 1795, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Later Wives

Wikipedia, drawing on Collins, says Colbee's second wife was Boorea, "Colebee's favourite". His third was Kurubarabulu, who had been Bennelong's wife. In July 1805 the ADB says Colbee and Bennelong, "who were usually allies, fought a duel over Bennelong's wife Kurubarabulu". The State Library of NSW guide quoted by Wikipedia says she afterwards became Colbee's wife.

The Hard Side

The same writers who liked Colbee recorded his violence, and it's only fair to include it. Tench called him "a good tempered merry fellow" in most things but said he "made no scruple" of hitting Daringa over the head. The ADB records that he was said to have badly beaten Boorong (Abaroo), who was living with the chaplain Richard Johnson's family, in October 1790. He tried to carry off a young woman from Government House in May 1791. And in 1797, with Yeranibe, he killed Yeranibe's young wife, and later killed Yeranibe himself. The ADB suggests these "may have been part of ritual revenge battles". Soldiers saved his life after a ritual fight in December 1797.

Two Colbees of the Harbour

Here's where it gets confusing. There was another Colbee from Botany Bay, a Gweagal man whose names William Dawes wrote down as Wárungin Wángubile Kólbi. Smith writes that he exchanged names with our Colbee, a mark of friendship, and the colonists called him "Botany Bay Colebee". According to Smith, his own people called our man "Cadi Colebee" to tell the two apart. Wikipedia adds that Kólbi's sister was Kurubarabulu, so the two men were brothers-in-law in the end.

There's a Port Jackson Painter watercolour captioned "Mr White, Harris and Laing with a party of Soldiers visiting Botany Bay Colebee at that place, when wounded". Grace Karskens, cited by Wikipedia, identifies the man sitting on the log nearby as our Colbee.

Watling Collection drawing no. 25, by the Port Jackson Painter. It's captioned as Surgeon White's party visiting the wounded Botany Bay Colebee, and Karskens identifies the seated man as Colbee. Port Jackson Painter, 1790s, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The names of Wárungin Wángubile Kólbi, 'Botany Bay Colebee', written by Lieutenant William Dawes. William Dawes, 1790, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The End of the Record

Smith notes there are no written references to Colbee between 1793 and January 1805. After the 1805 duel with Bennelong he soon drops out of sight. "There is no record of his life after 1806," says the ADB. Smith thinks he "probably died in a payback battle in 1806 or not long after, but his death was not officially recorded." So we don't know when or where he died, or where he's buried.

The Other Colebee – Richmond and Blacktown

You'll often read that Colebee was given one of the first land grants to an Aboriginal person. That was a different man, and it's worth keeping the two apart.

This Colebee was a Boorooberongal man of the Dharug people from the Hawkesbury. Wikipedia gives his dates as c.1800 to 1830 and names his father as Yarramundi, "Chief of the Richmond Tribe". His sister was Maria Lock. Smith's Dictionary of Sydney entry says he was a guide who helped William Cox survey the road over the Blue Mountains, and that with Nurragingy (Creek Jemmy) he tried to bring peace along the Hawkesbury, Nepean and Colo rivers and South Creek. Wikipedia adds the harder part: in 1816 he and Nurragingy acted as guides for the military in Governor Macquarie's punitive expeditions against the Gandangara and Darkinjung, though it says Colebee does not seem to have guided the party that carried out the Appin massacre.

Macquarie wrote in his diary on 25 May 1816, as Smith quotes, that he'd given Nurragingy a brass breastplate as "chief of the South Creek Tribe", and "I also promised him and his friend Colebee a grant of 30 acres of land on the South Creek between them". That land became Blacktown.

Maria Lock's ADB entry picks up the story. In March 1831 she petitioned Governor Darling for her "deceased brother Coley's (Colebee) grant at Blacktown". It took years, but "she received Colebee's thirty-acre (12.1 ha) grant in 1843", and her descendants lived on the family's land until about 1920.

The State Heritage Register plan of the Colebee and Nurragingy Land Grant site at Blacktown. Heritage Division (NSW), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Part of the Colebee and Nurragingy Land Grant site today. Tracy Appel, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Richmond Street frontage of the land grant site. Tracy Appel, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The site of the Blacktown Native Institution, across the road from Colebee's grant. Maria Lock had been a pupil of the Native Institution. Tracy Appel, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• c.1754–55 – Colbee born (Wikipedia gives c.1754, the ADB c.1755). Tench thought him "perhaps near thirty" in 1789.
• 1789 – Survives the smallpox epidemic, his face heavily scarred.
• 25 November 1789 – Captured at Manly Cove with Bennelong by Lt William Bradley's boat crew (the Dictionary of Sydney says 23 November).
• 12 December 1789 – Escapes from Sydney with part of his leg shackle still on.
• Early September 1790 – Meets the British again at the Manly whale feast and shows them his freed leg.
• 7 September 1790 – Present when Governor Phillip is speared by Willemering at Manly Cove.
• 18 October 1790 – Makes a separate peace with Phillip, probably at Farm Cove, and receives a hatchet.
• December 1790 – Daughter Panieboolong born. Colbee names Pemulwuy as the man who speared McEntire.
• April 1791 – Guide with Boladeree on Phillip's expedition to the Hawkesbury.
• May 1791 – A convict is flogged for stealing Daringa's fishing tackle.
• 1791 – Panieboolong dies at about five months old.
• 1795 – Daringa dies after the birth of a second child. Initiation ceremony at Farm Cove for Nanbarry and other boys.
• 1797 – Kills Yeranibe; his own life is saved by soldiers after a ritual fight in December.
• July 1805 – Duel with Bennelong over Kurubarabulu.
• After 1806 – Disappears from the records.
• The other Colebee: 25 May 1816 – Macquarie promises Nurragingy and Colebee of the Richmond people 30 acres at South Creek. 1831 – Maria Lock petitions for her late brother's grant. 1843 – She receives it.

Where the Sources Disagree

• The date of the capture. The ADB and Wikipedia say 25 November 1789, the date on Bradley's painting. Smith in the Dictionary of Sydney says 23 November.
• How long he was held. Tench, who was there, says Colbee escaped "in about a week". The ADB says "after three weeks", and Smith gives the night of 12 December 1789. Smith says he pulled the rope from his shackle; Wikipedia says he cut it.
• When Bennelong got free. The ADB says Bennelong "was freed in April 1790". Smith says he "ran away some six months later, in May 1790".
• His age. Tench guessed "perhaps near thirty" in 1789. Wikipedia says the estimate in 1789 was 35 and gives a birth year of c.1754; the ADB says c.1755.
• When the families came in. The ADB says Colbee and Bennelong brought their families into town "in September 1790". Smith's Willemering entry gives the peaceful "coming in" as 8 October 1790.
• When Panieboolong was born. Smith and Saunders say December 1790. The ADB says 1791.
• Daringa's family. Smith says her mother was Tàdyera and Pundah was her brother. Saunders says Pundah was her mother.
• Who led the lost soldier home? The ADB credits our Colbee. Wikipedia's article on Botany Bay Colebee, citing Phillip, credits Kólbi, the Botany Bay man.
• One Colebee or several? The revised ADB entry lists "Botany Bay Colebe" as one of our Colbee's other names, and its family links show Maria Lock as his sister. Wikipedia, Smith and Maria Lock's own ADB entry treat Botany Bay Colebee as a separate Gweagal man, and Maria Lock's brother as the Richmond Colebee of the 1816 grant. I've followed the second view.
• "First land grant". Smith says the Richmond Colebee and Nurragingy received "the first grant of land made by the British to an Aboriginal person". Wikipedia puts it more carefully, as the first grants to Aboriginal people in the area that became Blacktown.

My Earlier Posts

• Barangaroo – Cammeraygal Fisherwoman, Wife of Bennelong – c.1750 to 1791
• Woolaware Bennelong
• Manly – From Kai'ymay and Phillip's 'Manly Cove' of 1788 to the Ferries, the Quarantine Station and the Surf
• The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point and Bennelong Point to Fort Macquarie and Utzon's Sails
• Bennelong Point – Circular Quay East
• First Government House – Corner of Bridge Street & Phillip Street
• Sydney Cove – 1788
• Bungaree – The Broken Bay Man Who Sailed Around Australia with Flinders
• Cora Gooseberry – Queen Gooseberry – Widow of Bungaree
• Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales

Sources

• F. D. McCarthy, "Colebee (c.1755–c.1806)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 1, 1966 (revised 18 July 2025) – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/colebee-1909
• Keith Vincent Smith, "Colebee", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/colebee
• Keith Vincent Smith, "Daringa", Dictionary of Sydney, 2011 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/daringa
• Keith Vincent Smith, "Willemering", Dictionary of Sydney, 2016 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/willemering
• Grace Karskens, "Barangaroo and the Eora Fisherwomen", Dictionary of Sydney, 2014 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/barangaroo_and_the_eora_fisherwomen
• Aiesha Saunders, "A fisher woman of Warrane", Museums of History NSW, 2020 – https://mhnsw.au/stories/first-nations/a-fisher-woman-of-warrane/
• Naomi Parry, "Lock, Maria (1805–1878)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2005 – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lock-maria-13050
• "Colebee", Sydney Barani (City of Sydney) – https://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/colebee/
• Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson (1793), Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3534
• David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol. 1 (1798), Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12565
• "Colebe", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colebe
• "Botany Bay Colebee", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botany_Bay_Colebee
• "Colebee (Boorooberongal)", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colebee_(Boorooberongal)
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, as credited under each picture.

Barangaroo – Cammeraygal Fisherwoman, Wife of Bennelong – c.1750 to 1791

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names and images of people who have died.

Barangaroo was a Cammeraygal woman from the north side of Sydney Harbour, a fisherwoman of real standing, and the wife of Woollarawarre Bennelong. The First Fleet officers met her in the spring of 1790 and never quite knew what to make of her. She wouldn't wear their clothes, wouldn't drink their wine, broke Bennelong's fishing spear when he went off to visit the Governor, and grabbed at the flogger's arm when she was made to watch a convict whipped. She gave birth to her daughter Dilboong alone in the bush rather than at Government House, and she died not long after, in 1791. Bennelong cremated her with her fishing gear beside her and laid her ashes to rest in the Governor's garden. More than two centuries later the old East Darling Harbour wharves were renamed in her honour. This is her story, told from what the people who met her wrote down and what historians have made of it since.

'First interview with the Native Women at Port Jackson New South Wales', drawn by Lieutenant William Bradley. Grace Karskens thinks Barangaroo was very likely there. William Bradley, c.1802, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Who Was Barangaroo?

The Dictionary of Sydney describes Barangaroo simply: an Eora woman of the Cameragal people, the second wife of Bennelong, "a skilled fisherwoman with presence and authority in her community and the early colony". Her people, the Cammeraygal (you'll also see it spelt Cameragal or Kamaraygal), lived on the north side of the harbour. Historian Grace Karskens places her country "around North Harbour and Manly" and calls the Cameragal "the largest and most influential group in the Sydney coastal region".

Watkin Tench, the marine officer whose books are our best window into these years, explained how those clan names worked. "Cemeeragal, means the men who reside in the bay of Cameera," he wrote, and the women of a group were named by adding "eean" to the end. So Barangaroo was a Cameragaleon, a woman of Cameera.

Nobody wrote down when she was born. Wikipedia gives c.1750. The officers who met her in 1790 guessed she was about forty, and Karskens makes the point that this matters. Barangaroo was older and more experienced than the young women the officers already knew, and she carried "wisdom, status and influence" to match.

Before Bennelong

By the time the British met her, Barangaroo's world had already been torn apart. Smallpox swept through the Eora in 1789, and Karskens notes that it killed a disproportionate number of women and old people. Barangaroo survived it, but it cost her dearly. She had lost a husband and two children. Karskens says it was smallpox that took them; Wikipedia says the husband "allegedly" died of it. After that she married a new and younger husband, the ambitious Bennelong, and in Karskens' words she was now "one of a reduced number of women who had the knowledge of laws, teaching and women's rituals", with authority over the younger women around her.

Sydney Cove in 1788, painted by William Bradley, as the colony that would change Barangaroo's world was being set up. William Bradley, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Fisherwomen of the Harbour

To understand Barangaroo you have to understand fishing, because that's where her power came from. In the coastal Eora world, women were the main food providers and fish was the staple. The men stood still in the shallows and speared fish with multi-pronged fish-gigs. The women went out on the water in bark canoes, called nowie, and fished with hook and line.

Karskens' essay "Barangaroo and the Eora Fisherwomen" for the Dictionary of Sydney paints the picture. The women twisted their lines, carr-e-jun, from the fibre of kurrajong, cabbage tree or flax, and sometimes from animal fur or grass "nearly as fine as raw silk". The crescent-shaped hooks, burra, were ground from the broadest part of a turban shell. Surgeon George Worgan reckoned these showed "the greatest ingenuity" of anything the Eora made. A small fire burned on a clay pad in the canoe for warmth and for cooking the catch, and the women sang and kept time with their paddles, often with a baby at the breast, in surf that the officers thought would frighten their toughest sailors.

Aiesha Saunders, writing for Museums of History NSW, adds the custom the Eora called malgun, in which the top joints of a girl's little finger were taken off in infancy. John Turnbull recorded that the joint was thrown into the sea "that the child may be hereafter fortunate in fishing". Not everyone agreed on the meaning. Governor Phillip thought that explanation "too trivial to be the real cause", and historian Keith Vincent Smith suggests it may have marked a girl promised in marriage.

Karskens argues that control of food meant status and power for these women. Fishing gear wasn't trinkets. Once the officers worked that out, they collected the hooks alongside spears, and convicts caught stealing fishing tackle were punished severely.

A French engraving of Port Jackson people from Louis de Freycinet's voyage. It was made a generation after Barangaroo's time, but it's one of the few early pictures of Sydney Aboriginal family life. Freycinet voyage, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Meeting the Officers – Spring 1790

Barangaroo first appears in the records because of Bennelong. He and Colbee had been kidnapped at Manly in November 1789. Colbee escaped within weeks, and Bennelong got away in 1790. Then on 7 September 1790 Governor Phillip was speared at Manly Cove (my Manly post covers that day). In the weeks that followed the British were desperate to keep talking to Bennelong.

Tench describes a meeting on the north shore on 15 September 1790. Bennelong had been teasing the officers that his "old favourite, Barangaroo", had become "the wife of Colbee", and that he'd got "two large women" to make up for losing her. Now he admitted that the woman standing nearby was Barangaroo, and his wife. The girl Abaroo (Boorong), who was living in the settlement, was sent over to bring her in. Abaroo put a petticoat on her first. In Tench's words, "this was the prudery of the wilderness, which her husband joined us to ridicule, and we soon laughed her out of it", and the petticoat was dropped. At Bennelong's request the officers combed and cut her hair, which she seemed to enjoy. Wine she would not touch. She "turned from it with disgust", even with Bennelong urging her on.

Then came a moment that says a lot about her. The officers asked Abaroo to take Barangaroo aside and talk her into coming to Sydney. Tench admits it went the other way: "Barangaroo's arguments to induce Abaroo to rejoin their society, were more powerful than those of the latter". Abaroo came back to the boat reluctantly and sat "in sullen silence".

A few days later Tench found Bennelong and Barangaroo "shivering over a few lighted sticks", cooking small fish beside their canoe. The officers had brought back things that convicts had stolen from the Eora. Among them was a net full of fishing lines and tackle, which Barangaroo said was hers, and she slung it straight round her neck.

Karskens puts the first proper meeting a bit later, "on the north shore at Kirribilli in November 1790", and ties it to a huge haul by the British of about 4,000 Australian salmon, of which forty big fish were sent across to Bennelong's group as a present. Her theory is that Barangaroo was insulted. A fisherwoman winning her fish one at a time could see what it meant when white men handed food to Eora men by the netful: women would lose their hold on the food supply.

The spearing of Governor Phillip at Manly Cove, 7 September 1790, by the artist known as the Port Jackson Painter. Barangaroo enters the written record in the weeks after this. Port Jackson Painter, c.1790, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Broken Fish-Gig

On 8 October 1790 a signal fire was lit and parties went over to meet Bennelong, Barangaroo and others. Soon afterwards Bennelong decided to cross to Sydney Cove and visit the Governor. Barangaroo was dead against it. Tench asked where she was and was told she had "violently opposed Baneelon's departure. When she found persuasion vain, she had recourse to tears, scolding, and threats, stamping the ground, and tearing her hair." Then "she snatched up in her rage one of his fish-gigs, and dashed it with such fury on the rocks, that it broke."

She had good reason to be scared. The last time Bennelong had stayed with the British he'd been taken by force and held prisoner. To settle her nerves the chaplain, Richard Johnson, stayed behind on the north shore with Abaroo as a hostage until Bennelong came back. When the boat returned, Tench found Johnson and Barangaroo sitting at the fire. She was making fish-hooks.

When Bennelong saw his broken fish-gig, Tench says, he gave her "a look of savage fury", and the officers had to step in. Once he calmed down, the tables turned. Barangaroo, "emboldened by our presence and the finery in which we had decked her", put on "a haughty demeanour" and refused his caresses.

Karskens adds that Barangaroo refused to let Bennelong go to Rose Hill (Parramatta) whenever he tried, and that he wasn't allowed on the April 1791 expedition to the Nepean. "When he hit her, she hit him back," she writes. The officers were puzzled, because the couple were also obviously fond of each other.

Bennelong, drawn in 1798, some years after Barangaroo's death. James Neagle, 1798, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Hard Side of the Record

We should be honest about the violence in these sources. Tench wrote that Eora men struck their wives on the head with whatever was in their hand, and that "Baneelon did the same to Barangaroo, but she was a scold and a vixen, and nobody pitied her". It's an ugly line from a man of his time, and it tells us as much about Tench as about her. David Collins also left a note in his papers that Bennelong had "severely beaten" her on the morning she gave birth.

Barangaroo could be fierce herself. In late 1790 Bennelong took part in an attack on a young woman, and Tench describes him visiting her afterwards in the hospital and promising her protection. Barangaroo, who had come with him, "began to revile them both with great bitterness, threw stones at the girl and attempted to beat her with a club."

The Flogging – May 1791

One of the best-known stories about Barangaroo comes from May 1791. A convict was caught stealing fishing tackle from Daringa, the wife of Colbee, and Governor Phillip had him flogged in front of a group of Eora men and women. It didn't go down the way he hoped. Tench wrote that there was "not one of them that did not testify strong abhorrence of the punishment and equal sympathy with the sufferer". Then: "Daringa shed tears, and Barangaroo, kindling into anger, snatched a stick and menaced the executioner." Tench summed the two women up as "the former was ever meek and feminine, the latter fierce and unsubmissive."

Karskens tells the same story slightly differently. She has the officers inviting Barangaroo to watch, and has her becoming "disgusted and furious" and trying "to grab the whip out of the flogger's hands".

Daringa and Barangaroo were close. Keith Vincent Smith writes that Daringa had exchanged names with Barangaroo and was styled "Daringa Barangaroo", and Collins calls Barangaroo "Ba-rang-a-roo Da-ring-ha" when he records her death. In Eora custom an exchanged name was a serious bond.

Sydney Cove in 1794, by convict artist Thomas Watling, three years after Barangaroo's ashes were laid in the Governor's garden. Thomas Watling, 1794, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Dilboong

In 1791 Barangaroo had a baby girl. Karskens writes that Bennelong pushed for the birth to happen at Government House, so the child would belong to the new country, Sydney. Barangaroo said no. She gave birth on her own somewhere in the bush on the edge of the town.

Collins went quietly to see her a few hours later and was astonished. "To my great surprise she was walking about alone, and picking up sticks to mend her fire." The baby, "whose skin appeared to have a reddish cast", lay on a piece of soft bark on the ground. He watched her deal with the umbilical cord using a little kangaroo leg-bone that Bennelong had wrapped in punk and heated at the fire, and finally cut it with a shell.

The girl was called Dilboong. Collins says the name came from "a small bird, which we often heard in low wet grounds and in copses".

Death and Cremation

Barangaroo didn't live long after the birth. Karskens points out that "the officers were silent on why she died." Keith Vincent Smith dates her death to late 1791.

Collins was one of the few Europeans asked to be there at the end. Bennelong "determined at once to burn her", and asked Governor Phillip, Surgeon John White and Collins to attend. Bennelong's sister Carangarang came, along with several men and one or two other women. Collins describes the whole thing carefully. The ground was scraped back a few inches with a stick. A pyre about three feet high was built up from brushwood and twigs, with heavier wood on the sides, and covered with grass. Barangaroo's body, wrapped in an old blanket, was laid on it with her head to the north. Then "a basket with the fishing apparatus and other small furniture of the deceased was placed by her side". Bennelong laid logs over her, and the pyre was lit.

The next day Bennelong asked the officers back to watch him gather her ashes. He walked ahead "in a sort of solemn silence". With the end of a spear he raked "the calcined bones and ashes together in a heap", then shaped a mound over them with a piece of bark, smoothing every little bump, and set a log on each side. He asked them "if it was good". Collins, who often wrote harshly about the Eora, was moved. He said Bennelong's grief "seemed the result of an heartfelt affection for the object of it", and that he stood afterwards with his hands folded over his chest, deep in thought.

The spear in Bennelong's hand had a purpose. He blamed the carradhy (clever man or healer) Willemering, the same man who had speared Phillip, for not coming quickly enough to treat Barangaroo when she was ill. According to the Dictionary of Sydney, Bennelong later fought Willemering and wounded him in the thigh with that spear. Collins also wrote that Bennelong said "he should not be satisfied until he had sacrificed some one to her manes", meaning her spirit.

Where exactly were her ashes laid? Karskens says Bennelong "buried her ashes carefully in the garden of Government House". Collins records that baby Dilboong, who died only a few months later, was buried in the Governor's garden too, and that Bennelong slept near the spot afterwards.

Collins also noticed the way names were handled after a death. Colbee's wife, who "bore the same names as the deceased", gave them up and was called Bo-rahng-al-le-on. The same happened to a little settler girl whom Barangaroo had been so fond of that she always called her by her own name.

Sydney Cove in about 1792, by the Port Jackson Painter, the town as it was in the year after Barangaroo died. Port Jackson Painter, 1792, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

How Historians See Her Now

For a long time Barangaroo was a footnote in Bennelong's story, the "difficult" wife. Historians now read her differently. Karskens asks whether she was just a difficult woman and answers that "the answer may lie in fish and fishing". Barangaroo could see where life alongside the British led: dependence on men, black and white, and the loss of the women's control over food. Wikipedia sums up the modern view that historians have argued she was a matriarch of the Cammeraygal through her role as a fisherwoman.

Eora women kept fishing the harbour long after she was gone. Karskens says their canoes, with little plumes of smoke from the onboard fires, could still be seen until at least the late 1820s. She finishes her essay with a question: "where in Sydney Harbour, our paradise of waters, are the great Eora fisherwomen remembered?"

Barangaroo, the Place

Part of the answer now sits on the western edge of the CBD. The old East Darling Harbour wharf strip, the stretch of Hickson Road that wharfies called The Hungry Mile in the Depression, was given up as a port after container shipping moved away. In 2003 the NSW Government decided to redevelop it. After a design competition in 2005–06 and a public naming competition, Planning Minister Frank Sartor announced in October 2006 that the area would be called Barangaroo, and the Dictionary of Sydney dates the formal commemoration to 5 October 2007.

Some people have pointed out the irony. The Wikipedia article on Barangaroo notes that the precinct is "not located in her traditional lands". She was a north shore woman, and this is the south side of the harbour. The Barangaroo article also mentions that for a while the northern point was called Barangaroo Point, until the Geographical Names Board ruled that was wrong and brought back the historic name Millers Point.

The old wharf strip along Hickson Road, The Hungry Mile, before the redevelopment. Jane Bennett, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wharves and warehouses on Hickson Road around 1920, when this was one of the busiest working waterfronts in Sydney. Unknown photographer, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The empty concrete apron in 2009, before building started. Michael Woodhead, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Barangaroo Reserve

The best tribute is probably the headland park at the northern end. Barangaroo Reserve opened on 22 August 2015. It's a rebuilt headland, about six hectares, shaped on the pre-1836 shoreline that was cut away for wharves. It was designed by Johnson Pilton Walker with PWP Landscape Architecture. The foreshore is built from sandstone blocks quarried and cut on the site itself, and the park is planted with some 75,000 native trees, shrubs and plants. There's a cultural space called The Cutaway underneath it. The walk along the water is Wulugul Walk, and the big grassed area is the Walumil Lawns.

It's a lovely place to stand on a winter afternoon and watch the ferries. If you look across the water towards Balmain and Goat Island, you can just about picture a bark canoe with a little fire burning in it and a woman with a shell hook, singing as she fishes.

Barangaroo Reserve, the rebuilt sandstone headland at the northern end of the precinct. Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Looking out from the reserve across the harbour. Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Wulugul Walk, the foreshore path around the headland. Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Walumil Lawns at Barangaroo Reserve. Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Cutaway, the cultural space built inside the headland. Wpcpey, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The headland seen from the water. Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Barangaroo towers from Pyrmont at sunset, 2023. Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Barangaroo ferry wharf, which replaced the old Darling Harbour wharf in 2017. MDRX, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• c.1750 – Barangaroo born, according to Wikipedia (no record exists; the officers guessed her age at about 40 in 1790).
• February 1788 – British officers meet Cameragal women at Manly. Karskens thinks Barangaroo was "very likely present".
• 1789 – Smallpox epidemic among the Eora. Barangaroo loses her first husband and two children.
• 25 November 1789 – Bennelong and Colbee kidnapped at Manly Cove (the Dictionary of Sydney gives 23 November).
• 7 September 1790 – Governor Phillip speared at Manly Cove.
• 15 September 1790 – Tench meets Barangaroo on the north shore: the petticoat, the haircut, the refused wine.
• October 1790 – Barangaroo breaks Bennelong's fish-gig when he crosses to visit the Governor.
• November 1790 – Karskens' date for the Kirribilli meeting and the gift of salmon.
• May 1791 – The flogging of a convict for stealing Daringa's fishing tackle. Barangaroo threatens the flogger with a stick.
• 1791 – Dilboong born in the bush. Barangaroo dies later in 1791, is cremated with her fishing gear, and her ashes are buried by Bennelong.
• After Barangaroo's death – Dilboong dies as a baby, only a few months old (Wikipedia), and is buried in the Governor's garden (Collins).
• 2003 – NSW Government decides to redevelop East Darling Harbour.
• 18 October 2006 – Frank Sartor announces the name Barangaroo.
• 5 October 2007 – Date the Dictionary of Sydney gives for the commemoration of the name.
• 22 August 2015 – Barangaroo Reserve opens.

Where the Sources Disagree

• When the officers first met her. Tench describes meeting her on the north shore on 15 September 1790. Wikipedia says October 1790. Karskens says "late 1790" and puts the key meeting at Kirribilli in November 1790.
• The flogging. Tench says she "snatched a stick and menaced the executioner". Karskens says she tried "to grab the whip out of the flogger's hands".
• What happened to her ashes. Collins describes Bennelong raking them into a carefully built mound. Karskens says he "buried her ashes carefully in the garden of Government House". Wikipedia says the ashes were "scattered" around Phillip's garden.
• Her first husband's death. Karskens says smallpox killed her husband and two children. Wikipedia says the husband "allegedly" died of smallpox.
• When the precinct was named. Wikipedia's article on Barangaroo the woman says the area was officially named in October 2006, the date of Sartor's announcement. The precinct article says it was "renamed in October 2007", and the Dictionary of Sydney gives 5 October 2007.
• Whose wife was she in 1790? Bennelong told Tench she had become "the wife of Colbee", and then later presented her as his own wife. Tench didn't know whether to believe him either time.
• Dilboong's dates. Wikipedia says Dilboong lived only a few months. Collins describes her being at the breast when her mother died and buried later in the Governor's garden, but I haven't found a firm date for her death in the sources I read.

My Earlier Posts

• Woolaware Bennelong
• Barangaroo – Maritime – Coastal – Inner Sydney
• The Rocks And Barangaroo
• Manly – From Kai'ymay and Phillip's 'Manly Cove' of 1788 to the Ferries, the Quarantine Station and the Surf
• The Sydney Opera House – From Cattle Point and Bennelong Point to Fort Macquarie and Utzon's Sails
• Bennelong Point – Circular Quay East
• First Government House – Corner of Bridge Street & Phillip Street
• Museum Of Sydney – Site Of Original Government House
• Sydney Cove – 1788
• Bungaree – The Broken Bay Man Who Sailed Around Australia with Flinders
• Cora Gooseberry – Queen Gooseberry – Widow of Bungaree
• Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales

Sources

• Grace Karskens, "Barangaroo and the Eora Fisherwomen", Dictionary of Sydney, 2014 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/barangaroo_and_the_eora_fisherwomen
• "Barangaroo" (person), Dictionary of Sydney – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/person/barangaroo
• Keith Vincent Smith, "Daringa", Dictionary of Sydney, 2011 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/daringa
• Keith Vincent Smith, "Willemering", Dictionary of Sydney, 2016 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/willemering
• Aiesha Saunders, "A fisher woman of Warrane", Museums of History NSW, 2020 – https://mhnsw.au/stories/first-nations/a-fisher-woman-of-warrane/
• Watkin Tench, A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson (1793), Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3534
• David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, vol. 1 (1798), Project Gutenberg – https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12565
• F. D. McCarthy, "Colebee", Australian Dictionary of Biography (rev. 2025) – https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/colebee-1909
• "Barangaroo", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barangaroo
• "Barangaroo, New South Wales", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barangaroo,_New_South_Wales
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, as credited under each picture.