Aboriginal woman and child in a canoe, c. 1805 | State Library of New South Wales

Aboriginal woman and child in a canoe, c. 1805
Artist unknown.
Watercolour
From Natives of New South Wales; drawn from life in Botany Bay.
Ref: PXB 513

Aboriginal woman and child in a canoe

Eora canoes were three to four metres long and about one metre wide, shallow and shaped from a straight sheet of bark, and bunched and tied with cord at the ends. Spacer sticks jammed across the centre held the sides apart.

In August 1788, 67 canoes, carrying 94 men, 34 women and nine children, were counted around the harbour, despite the fact, as Governor Phillip remarked (in John Hunter's An Historical Journal ... 1793), 'It was the season in which they make their new Canoes, and large parties were known to be in the woods for this purpose'.