Kuringgai

The Guringai (also Kuringai ) were a tribe of Aborigines who lived on the land between the Broken Bay in the north and the Sydney Harbour for thousands of years in the South. The Guringai have inhabited the area since proven 7,400 years, in other sources numbers are called up to 20,000 years.

History

As hunters and gatherers, the Guringai fed from hunting mammals and marine animals, as well as by collecting fruits and roots. In about 4 to 5 hours activity per day, they ensured their food security and during the other time they used their culture that has been greatly lived through ceremonies and rituals.

When the First Fleet arrived, the British colonists began to settle on their ancestral lands and the Guringai were displaced from their original tribal area. In less than a year, the population of the Aboriginal people had been decimated throughout the Sydney Basin originally estimated 5,000 Aboriginal people by half, mainly due to the smallpox epidemic in Australia 1789. The rapidly evolving settler population threatened their fishing grounds, as they were fishing with large nets, the kangaroos was decimated by hunt with firearms and land by fencing it ultimately displaced from their water points.

Tribal area

John Fraser was the first, than that of the Kuringgai defined an area in Australia in 1892 and demarcated. Recent research on this further subdivided into the tribes of Tharawal, Eora, Dharuk, Darkinjung, Awabakal, Worimi, Birpai, Ngamba and more.

The clans were the Guringai Garrigal, Cammeragal, Borregegal, Awaba, Walkeloa and more. It is estimated that they said 20 to 30 dialects, nine are currently kept linguistically. The present territory of the Ku - ring-gai Chase National Park covers parts of the traditional country of Guringai in which two clans lived: the Garrigal to the West of the Head and the Terramerragal area in Turramurra.

Descendants of Guringai still live in this area and in 2001 was the first Guringai festival commemorating the Guringai instead, which takes place every year since then in the period from late May to July. The festival runs through workshops, art exhibitions, demonstrations, discussions and showing films.

Artifacts

Significant traces of the life of Guringai are located in the Ku-ring -gai Chase National Park. More than 800 artifacts are secured on the grounds of national parks, including significant petroglyphs, the Sydney rock engravings, burial places, tool marks from the grinding of stone axes and places where Aboriginal people lived and waste left behind.

The petroglyphs on the sandstone in the canyons, to the coast lines and in caves show people and mythical figures, animals such as wallabies, fish, reptiles, birds, whales, sharks and hunting tools such as boomerang, spears and shields. Cave drawings and paintings are in the rocks or imprints of hands and feet, boomerangs and stone axes. Grinding marks of stone axes can be seen on the sandstone soils, along streams and rivers, waterfalls and water holes. Numerous waste pits are located in this national park, often in addition to caves, rock overhangs or along watercourses, where the Aborigines were fishing or shellfish gathering. The pits often contain shells, but also tools and bones of fish, mammals and shellfish and sometimes human bones.