A Living Collection - Grace Karskens

Grace Karskens teaches Australian history at the University of New South Wales.

She is interested in social and cultural history, historical archaeology and environmental history. Her books, including The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney and Inside the Rocks: The Archaeology of a Neighbourhood have won several awards, and her latest book The Colony: A History of Early Sydney was published by Allen & Unwin in 2009.

Grace is a Trustee of the NSW Historic Houses Trust and a member of the Board of the Dictionary of Sydney.

 

Sydney from the west side of the Cove, c. 1803

Evans, George William (attrib.), 1780–1852
Watercolour
Presented by FH Wilson, 1899 (transferred from AGNSW)
XV1/1803/1

You can get lost in this painting. Imagine standing in the Rocks, somewhere high above the water, and looking down over the early town of Sydney, spread around the cove in 1802.

These three buildings before you are the town’s first hospital. A woman is sweeping dirt out the doorway, and a winged invalid’s chair stands airing in the sun. On the other side of the cove, Government House boasts a fine new drawing room, testament to the feminising influence of Mrs King, the governor’s wife. There are neat cottages with green gardens, tracks running here and there – this is a town where most people move about on foot. A miniscule detachment of red-coated soldiers marches across the Tank Stream bridge, muskets on shoulders, their boots on the timber deck a distant tramp. The decks of the ships in the cove are lively with people too.

Who are the people most clearly, most humanly shown in this picture? Here in the foreground are groups of Aboriginal people, throwing spears, gathered about a campfire, sitting in a circle talking; and there are some white men too, chatting, lounging, watching, completely at their ease.

But look closely: you can see individual Aboriginal men, women and children, even their faces and expressions, you can almost hear the soft rolling words of language. These are the Sydney Aborigines, people who ‘came in’ after November 1790, and this artist wants you to know about them.

 

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