INTRODUCTION
This section of Awaba deals with people, past
and present, who are either Awabakal, or have played a role in
the Aboriginal history of the Newcastle Lake Macquarie region.
Numerous local Aboriginal characters made their
mark in the records of the invader. The most famous is Birabahn,
already a celebrated figure in Sydney before his long association
with Threlkeld and the Lake Macquarie mission. Later in the century,
there were locally notable figures such as "Old Ned"
and his wife, Margaret of the Awabakal,
who remain strong in the memory of contemporary Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal communities.
There are many non-Aborigines who made notable
contributions to the history and understanding of the region's
Aboriginal population, particularly Reverend L.E. Threlkeld (1788-1859),
whose biography has already been authoritatively written by Niel
Gunson (Gunson
1966b; Gunson
1974) and earlier by Dr. Ben W. Champion in the Royal Australian
Historical Society Journal in 1939 (Champion 1939). Others,
whose biographies are given here, include
Reverend Dr John Fraser, Walter
John Enright and Percy Haslam.
In "The True Descendants
from the Awabakal Tribe", Nola, Leah and Kerrie (nee
Powell) describe their family history and the pursuit of their
great-great-grandparents, Margaret and Ned.
|
