Darug people

The Darug people (also spelt Dharuk, Dharug and Daruk) are a language group (sometimes called a nation) of Indigenous Australians, who are traditional custodians of much of what is modern day Sydney. There is some dispute about the extent of the Darug nation. Some historians believe the coastal Eora (also spelt Iyura and Yura) people were a separate tribe to the Darug. Others believe they were part of the same tribe [1]. The term eora has been proven to mean 'people of this place'. And many historians and Sydney linguist agree the coastal language is a dialect of the Western language. The territory that was indisputably Darug Boorooberongal-Warmuli (Darug Lore) was the Cumberland Plain area in western Sydney and it stretched from Wisemans Ferry in the north down to around Camden in the south. They also extended into the foothills of the Blue Mountains in the west and the Hills District to the east.

There was certainly a cultural divide between the western Darug and the coastal Darug. The coastal Darug were katungal or 'sea people'. They built canoes and their diet was primarily seafood including fish and shellfish from Sydney Harbour, Botany Bay and their associated rivers. The inland Darug were paiendra or 'tomahawk people'. They hunted kangaroos, emus and other land animals and used stone axes more extensively.[2]

Darug clans

The Darug nation was divided up into a number of clans who each tended to live in a certain geographic area. This geographic area would also house descendant clans. Each clan typically included 50 to 100 people. Numbers in a geographic descendant clan area were kept at the lowest levels necessary for the survival of the clan. It was often the case that men and women married between the clans, and thus the members of the clans were interrelated.

Known Darug clans included:

• Wangal
• Kurrajong
• Boorooberongal
• Cattai
• Bidjigal
• Gommerigal
• Mulgoa
• Cannemegal
• Bool-bain-ora
• Cabrigal
• Muringong
• Dural

Smallpox introduced in 1789 by the British colonists destroyed up to 90% of the population in some areas.

Neighbouring people were the Kuringgai to the northeast around Broken Bay, the Darkinjung to the north, the Wiradjuri to the west on the other side of the Blue Mountains, the Gandangara to the southwest in the Southern Highlands and the Tharawal to the southeast in the Illawarra area.

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