Qualla: Eora

Eora: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dippiljemmy, CC0. Before there were sails on the horizon, there were canoes on the water. They threaded the coves and inlets of the great harbour the British would call Port Jackson, lit by small fires burning on beds of clay where women cooked the morning catch. The people who lived here were expert in everything the coast could offer: where the mullet ran, how the oysters clustered on the rock ledges, when the turtles came close enough to take. They were not one tribe but many clans, each tied to its own stretch of sandstone and saltwater. The British, struggling to understand, latched onto a single word from the local language and made it stand for all of them: Eora, which simply meant the people.

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Image: Dippiljemmy | CC0

Eora: The Saltwater Country

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dippiljemmy, CC0. Eora country runs along sandstone ridges and tidal lagoons from the northern shores of the harbour to Botany Bay and the Georges River, reaching inland as far as Parramatta. The land shaped the lives lived on it. These were coastal people who took most of what they needed from th...

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Image: Dippiljemmy | CC0

Eora: Ghosts on the Shore

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dippiljemmy, CC0. When the First Fleet anchored in January 1788, roughly fifteen hundred Eora watched newcomers begin tearing into trees and earth with a violence that made no sense. At first the people wondered whether these pale strangers were spirits of the dead, their very sex uncertain, until...

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Image: Dippiljemmy | CC0

Eora: The Coming of Gai-galla

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hesperian, CC BY-SA 3.0. In April 1789, a little more than a year after the ships arrived, a sickness swept the harbour with terrible speed. The Eora called it gai-galla. The British recognised it as smallpox. By early that year, settlers and sailors were stumbling on the dead in coves and on beaches; th...

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Image: Hesperian | CC BY-SA 3.0

Eora: The Ones Who Endured

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was Pjamescowie at English Wikipedia., Public domain. Even in catastrophe, the Eora left names that still echo across Sydney. Bennelong learned the colony's manners and weaknesses better than the British ever learned his, lived in a brick hut on the point where the Opera House now stands, and sailed to England and back. Barangaroo, ...

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Image: The original uploader was Pjamescowie at English Wikipedia. | Public domain