The site of a massacre near Appin where at least 14 Aboriginal people were murdered by British soldiers has been added to the state's heritage register, affording it legal recognition and protection.
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The Heritage Council of NSW and the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Advisory Committee together nominated the Appin massacre cultural landscape for listing on the State Heritage Register for its shared Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultural heritage values.
In 1816, Governor Lachlan Macquarie sent out three military detachments to track down, capture or kill Aboriginal people after a series of deadly conflicts between Europeans and Aboriginal people who were resisting the invasion of their land.
In the early hours of April 17, 1816 one of these detachments came across a group of Dharawal and Gundungurra people near the Cataract River.
The soldiers raided the encampment, shot at the group and drove them off the cliffs of the gorge to their deaths.
Officially 14 men, women and children were killed that morning, but historians say the number of dead is likely to be much higher.
The listing of the Appin massacre site on the State Heritage Register provides formal legal recognition that it is of state heritage significance, and it means it will be protected and conserved.
"The State Heritage Register listing reclaims Aboriginal history from the colonial story and ensures that these historical events of colonial Australia do not fade from national memory," Heritage NSW executive director Sam Kidman said.
ACHAC former chair Glenda Chalker said the site was a place of sorrow, significant to the Dharawal and Gundungurra people.
"This landscape is now protected from development, so future generations can learn of the atrocities and injustice to our ancestors," she said.
The Appin massacre cultural landscape includes five locations significant to the 1816 massacre, murders that occurred in 1814, the hanging and mutilation of resistance warriors in the aftermath of the killings, and the May 4 1816 proclamation by Governor Macquarie, which sought to control and restrict Aboriginal people.
These locations are spread across the Rocky Ponds Creek catchment, the gorge and the waterways of the Cataract and Nepean rivers.
"The Appin massacre cultural landscape is of state heritage significance as a representative example of a landscape of colonial frontier violence," the heritage listing said.
"Frontier violence was rife during the colonial expansion of the nineteenth century, which displaced First Nations people through the theft of land, competition for resources and food supplies and the destruction of customs, practices and traditional ways of life.
"In the wake of these actions, a subversive model for continued colonial expansion across new Australian frontiers was introduced that arguably formed the basis for colonial, and later state government policies that aimed to control and restrict the lives of First Nations people."
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Natalie Croxon
Reporter at the Illawarra Mercury, mostly covering social affairs. Previously of the Bendigo Advertiser, Northern Daily Leader and Quirindi Advocate. Our Watch award winner.
Reporter at the Illawarra Mercury, mostly covering social affairs. Previously of the Bendigo Advertiser, Northern Daily Leader and Quirindi Advocate. Our Watch award winner.
