Mural 2: Wallamullah – Place of Plenty

Artists’ statement

To its inhabitants and traditional owners among the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, Woolloomooloo Bay and its shores were known as Wallamullah, or ‘place of plenty’.

This gathering place was used for hunting, fishing and foraging around an estuarine mangrove swamp, where Yurong Creek ran into the bay. Yurong is the Aboriginal language name for Mrs Macquarie’s Point.

Governor Macquarie set the land aside as an Aboriginal reserve until 1793 and called it Henrietta Town after his wife. Well known individuals such as Bowen Bungaree – ‘King’ Bungaree’s eldest son, who was the first Aboriginal person known to make a drawing on paper in 1823 – his mother Cora Gooseberry, and their extended family camped here until the 1840s, at a spot near Centipede Rock at Woolloomooloo. They were regularly seen at the nearby Circular Quay wharves, selling fish and oyster catches, and demonstrating how to throw boomerangs.

Woolloomooloo Bay was also known as Palmers Cove. In 1793, the first land grant of 100 acres was made to John Palmer, the colony’s second commissary who came to Sydney with the First Fleet in 1788. Palmer named his house, built on a Gadigal ceremonial ground, Woollamoola.

Aboriginal people continued to gather in this area when Palmer sold the house to Edward Riley in 1822. The estate was subdivided after Riley’s suicide in the house in 1825. As elsewhere, the original owners and inhabitants of the land were unceremoniously removed as its land value to the colony in Sydney increased. A small and changing Aboriginal community survived into the 1970s and to the present day.

The design of the panel is based on the Aboriginal land rights flag – black at the top for the colour of the people, a yellow circle at the centre for the sun and red for the land, and the blood that has been shed.