Transcript

Well I’ve just been on the rocks yeah, looking to see if we can find some natural resources that we utilize from the ocean. And I've actually found a good number of shellfish here that I can actually talk to you about. So the first one I would like to talk to you about is this one here. This one is a real delicacy for Dharawal people. We call that one a bimbla and what makes this shellfish particularly special is that it has blood in it, so it's a very delicious shellfish but it's also good for bait as well. So when we want to go fishing this is the main shellfish that we go for.

This one here that's an oyster. The oysters around here in Dharawal country they vary in size so if you were to go around to Towra Point you would find very huge oyster shells but these types of shells here are the ones you find a little bit more closely to Kurnell. This particular oyster here which we call bitha you can find on the rocks.

This one here that's another type of shellfish. With all the Aboriginal middens you find in Dharawal country you usually find these sorts of shells inside of them. So shell middens are like books for us. When we look into those middens they tell us what our old people used to eat. Some shell middens are thousands of years old and these shells are in them and that tells us that our people consume this type of shellfish three thousand years ago.

We have another shellfish here it's called a mussel. They're very common around here you can find them in the rock pools or where the mangroves are. They're another delicacy for us.

Another real delicacy for us is what we call a conch. As you can see there's different sizes here. There's a small one, a medium-sized one and that's quite a large one.

We have scallop shells here. Scallops aren't usually found on the rocks but they can be found on the sand you know just not far from where the rocks are as well.

This one here is a real delicacy for us it's our number one favoured food. It's called an abalone. We call it a mutton fish because of its taste and it's a very stable seafood for the Dharawal people. We usually got to catch those on a low tide. When the tide goes out we like to look along the edges of the rock platform to find these.

Here we have what we call a cunjevoi and cunjevoi when they're on the rocks they usually spurt up water on their own or if you tread on them by accident they can squirt up water. You can also eat these as well but we usually like to use those for bait mainly.

This one here a lot of people are aware of this one it's called a periwinkle. You find hundreds of them on rock platforms like this. You need to gather quite a number of them you know to be able to get a decent meal from them. So that was also a stable diet for us as well.

There's lots of different kinds of crabs you find in the rock pools along those platforms here. We call crabs gariga and they're a major source of food for us as well.

What I'd also like to talk about is the sorts of fish that you get along the rock platforms as well. The main fish that we like to catch from the rocks are wollamai, that's snapper. So you can get them when the big southerly winds are blowing. So the snapper which is quite a big fish they like to come around and find shelter in here when there's a big southerly blowing. So you can actually catch them in the bay here or off the points.

We have leather jacket fish which we call ngark and you can catch luderick as well in the rock pools or just off the the rock platforms here as well. We call them gerounj.

Now I mentioned earlier about a shell midden, so why don't we go and look at a shell midden.

So here we are at the midden I spoke about earlier it's a very important place for us. As you can see there's lots of shellfish here and these shellfish are a record of what Dharawal people collected over many thousands of years and consumed as food. These shell middens are just like books to us. They're books with many pages, many chapters to it. In this particular shell midden are the shells that I spoke about to you earlier on.

I'd like to finish now by thanking you all for going on this journey with me I really enjoy teaching you and I look forward to seeing you another time.

End of transcript