Misunderstanding:  The historical fiction of the word Guringai that has filled a void in our knowledge of the original inhabitants

Before each council meeting, most councillors across northern Sydney acknowledge the traditional custodianship of the area by the Guringai people.

Aborigines in Port Jackson. Courtesy Manly Art Gallery and Museum ccccc

Before each council meeting, most councillors across northern Sydney acknowledge the traditional custodianship of the area by the Guringai people.

Each year the peninsula hosts the Guringai Festival in recognition of the original inhabitants of the northern beaches.

But the word Guringai has no connection to the Aborigines of northern Sydney.

It stems from the work of a West Maitland schoolteacher in the 1880s in which he used the word Gringai to describe a group of Aborigines living near Dungog – 230km from the northern beaches – and even there he erred.

A group of Aborigines on the north shore of Port Jackson. Illustration by Thomas Watling. Courtesy British Museum

Only in recent years has this historical fiction been properly analysed and now the Aboriginal Heritage Office – a joint initiative of and funded by Manly, Warringah, Pittwater, North Sydney, Lane Cove, Willoughby, Ku-ring-gai and Ryde councils – has publicly denounced the use of the word Guringai.

In a new document, Filling A Void, the heritage office says there is no record of the word Guringai or any of its derivatives, including Ku-ring-gai, in any of the early accounts of the colony after white settlement and no hint that the Aborigines of the northern beaches or any other part of Sydney had ever heard the word.

A typical depiction of a Sydney Aborigine about 1800. Courtesy British Museum

The root of the problem lies in what the first settlers brought with them – their assumption that the Aborigines would all speak the same language, their belief the Aborigines lacked any cultural complexity and a failure to come to grips with the people they encountered.

What the first settlers also brought with them were a wide range of European diseases, to which the locals had no immunity, resulting in what in other parts of the world has been called conquest by disease.

In 1789 an outbreak of what was probably smallpox in Sydney killed many Aborigines and caused a large number of survivors to flee.

The Aborigines who eventually returned to the northern beaches did not necessarily originate here, so they had little knowledge of the local language or ­dialect.

Some of the earliest attempts by the first settlers to understand Aboriginal culture and language consisted of compiling word lists.

The resulting word lists, were rudimentary, piecemeal and confusing. But there was no mention in any of the word lists of the word Guringai.

In 1882, Maitland schoolteacher John Fraser wrote what he thought was an authoritative work on the Aborigines of NSW and used the word Gringai when referring to a group of Aborigines in the Dungog area but made no connection between that group and the Aborigines who lived in or around Sydney.

Typical depiction of an Aborigine

In 1892, Fraser republished his work and this time modified Guringai to Kurringgai and said the group occupied the coast “for a long distance north and south of Newcastle”.

By the early 1900s, the word Kurringgai had been adopted by others interested in Aboriginal history and languages and was taken to refer to Aborigines living in northern Sydney.

As the heritage office document points out, the word Kurringgai had been adopted without question and used in a modified form for a national park in 1894, a train station in 1903 and a council area in 1906.

Ku-ring-gai certainly had a nice ring to it and it rolled easily off the tongue.

That’s as far as the name got – at least for the next 80 or years or so – until it began to attract the derision of better researchers.

One described Fraser’s work as “most unsatisfactory and unquestionably the most inaccurate and garbled account ever published about the Aborigines.”

Despite this demolition of Fraser’s credentials and abilities, the word Guringai wasn’t demolished with its author’s reputation and it was picked up from time to time until it became widely accepted as the name for the original inhabitants of northern Sydney or of their language.

But more recent research into the language of the Aborigines living in and around Sydney indicates the Aborigines in the Sydney Basin spoke one language, although there were two dialects – one spoken by the people who lived along the coast and another spoken by those who lived further inland, although the two could understand each other.

A view of Port Jackson. Courtesy Manly Art Gallery and Museum

And importantly, neither Guringai or Ku-ring-gai or any other derivatives of Fraser’s Gringai is given any linguistic validity.

According to Filling A Void: “It is unfortunate that the term Guringai has become widely known in northern Sydney and it is understandable that people wish to use it, as it is convenient to have a single word to cover the language, tribe/nation, identity and culture of a region.

“However, it is based on a 19th century fiction and the Aboriginal Heritage Office would argue that the use of the term Guringai or any of its various spellings, such as Kuringgai, is not warranted, given its origin and previous use. It is not authentic to the area, it was coined by a non-Aboriginal person and it gives a misleading ­impression of the connectivity of some original clan boundaries.

“It is part of the story of this place that there is no certainty over tribal names, … or language groups.

“In the absence of a convenient single term for the whole of northern Sydney, the Aboriginal Heritage Office would recommend the use of clan names for local areas, with the understanding that these too have their limitations … and the acceptance of the truth of the lack of certainty as a feature of how Aboriginal history and heritage are portrayed.”

To read Filling A Void, visit aboriginalheritage.org