All about the ancient tribes
Woollarawarre Bennelong ( c. 1764 – 3 January 1813), also spelt Baneelon, was a senior man of the Eora, an Aboriginal Australian people of the Port Jackson area, at the time of the first British settlement in Australia in 1788.
Bennelong (c. 1764-1813), mediator, informant and cultural broker, was born into the Wangal clan on the south bank of the Parramatta River about 1764. [3] 3Bennelong and the Gadigal leader Colebee were abducted at Kayeemy (Manly Cove) on 25 November 1789.
The area became known as Bennelong Point. He played an important role as a mediator between the Aboriginal clans and the colonists. In 1792 Bennelong and an Aboriginal youth, Yemmerrawanie, travelled with Governor Arthur Phillip to England.
He was able to learn to speak English very quickly and became a friend of Phillip. After six months Bennelong escaped to go back to his clan. He learned to speak English. In 1790, Bennelong asked Phillip to build him a hut on the edge of Sydney Harbour.
Woollarawarre Bennelong was the first Aboriginal man to visit Europe and return. He was born on the south shore of the Parramatta River around 1764. In late November 1789, Governor Arthur Phillip had orders from King George III to use “every possible means” to open dialogue with the natives.
The residential home at 25 Watson Street in Putney, in Sydney’s north-west, was the burial site of Bennelong, an Eora nation elder who acted as an intermediary between British settlers and Sydney’s Aboriginal community.
Opera House is situated on Bennelong Point (originally called Cattle Point), a promontory on the south side of the harbour just east of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was named for Bennelong, one of two Aboriginal people (the other man was named Colebee) who served as liaisons between Australia’s first…
Truganini (Trugernanner, Trukanini, Trucanini) (1812? –76), Aboriginal woman, was the daughter of Mangana, leader of a band of the south-east tribe. In her youth she took part in her people’s traditional culture, but Aboriginal life was disrupted by European invasion.
Bennelong took readily to life among the white men, relished their food, acquired a taste for liquor, learned to speak English and became particularly attached to the governor, in whose house he lodged.
On May 13, 1787, the “First Fleet” of military leaders, sailors, and convicts set sail from Portsmouth, England, to found the first European colony in Australia, Botany Bay.
An image of Boorong, now held by the Natural History Museum in London, depicts her at her brother Ballooderry’s funeral in December 1791. By 1797, Boorong was married to Bennelong.