Eoran

The Eora are the coastal Aboriginal people of the Sydney basin, the name British officers first gave the clans around Port Jackson when the First Fleet arrived in January 1788. They numbered perhaps fifteen hundred and spoke the coastal Iyora dialect of Dharug, living from the sea in bark canoes, netting mullet and gathering oysters.

William Dawes recorded their speech from the woman Patyegarang, and words such as dingo, wombat and corroboree later passed into English. Contact began with kidnappings: Arabanoo was seized as an intermediary, then Bennelong, for whom Governor Phillip built a brick hut on the point named after Bennelong.

In April 1789 a smallpox epidemic, called gai-galla by the Eora, swept the harbour, killing half or more of them within the first years of settlement and nearly wiping out the Cadigal clan; the coastal dialect died out within two generations.