Dharugi

The Dharug are an Aboriginal Australian nation of the Sydney basin, from Sydney Harbour and Botany Bay inland along the Hawkesbury and Parramatta rivers.

Their language had two dialects: inland paiendra, the tool people, hunted kangaroos and emus with stone axes, while coastal katungal, the sea people whose speech was also called Eora, built canoes and lived on fish and shellfish.

British colonisation after 1788 shattered this world: smallpox in 1789 killed up to nine in ten in some areas, and farms spread along the Hawkesbury from 1794 blocked their food grounds, opening decades of guerrilla war. The warrior Pemulwuy led raids on Parramatta until he was shot in 1802, his head pickled and sent to Joseph Banks, and Governor Macquarie's 1816 orders banned armed gatherings and ringed the district with military posts, breaking open resistance by the 1830s.