Ivanhoe Park cultural landscape is a heritage-listed former clubhouse, croquet court, cycling, tramway and pleasure garden and now scout hall, sports venue, commemorations, park, passive recreation, childcare centre and community building at Sydney Road, Manly, Northern Beaches Council, New South Wales, Australia. It is also known as Ivanhoe Park (including Manly Oval) cultural landscape and Manly Park. The property is owned by the Department of Industry, a department of the Government of New South Wales. The site was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 23 August 2019.
History
Pre and post-contact
Situated immediately between the inner harbour to south, the ocean beach to the east, the entry point to North Head to the south east, the eastern escarpment plateau and fertile lands north, the land of Ivanhoe Park and Manly Oval. Ivanhoe Park's eastern end (now bowling greens, Manly Oval and tennis courts) is on low land prone to flooding and tidal surges. Some or all of that land was likely swamp country vegetated by mangroves and reeds for basket making and home to various crustacea, fish, birds and plant food supplies. Rising westwards in the park (currently botanic gardens) are reasonably steep slopes of sandstone which could well have offered shelter (ideally facing east and north east) and firewood. Most importantly, flowing down these slopes was at least one watercourse providing essential potable water. Water courses still flow through Ivanhoe Park. This environment provided good food supplies from the sea and mangrove swamp areas.
Early records of the first European contact with Aboriginals near present-day Manly attest that they were numerous and well settled. "The explorers attempted to count the number of indigenous Australians around the north shores (of the Middle Harbour/Manly area) saw 94 men, 34 women, six children and 67 canoes, but they felt many more were hidden from sight." Various early records demonstrate that the "Kay-ye-my" people of the Manly area, as Arthur Phillip called them, had a rich heritage.
Describing Captain Arthur Phillip's arrival in North Arm in January 1788, it is recorded "The boats, in passing near a point of land in this harbour, were seen by a number of men and twenty of them waded into the water unarmed, received what was offered them and examined the boats with a curiosity that gave me a much higher opinion of them, than I had formed from the behaviour of those seen in Captain Cook's voyage. And their confidence and Manly behaviour made me give the name of Manly Cove to this place." Phillip was impressed by the stature and inquisitiveness of these Aboriginals.
Aboriginal life in the Manly area was well observed by Phillip, Hunter and Bradley and others in the very early years of colonisation (1788-1790). Together, as detailed in Curby's book they recorded a quite sophisticated and enduring people in the area. Curby wrote: "For at least 20,000 years before Europeans passed through this grand "entrance" (Sydney Heads) Aboriginal people lived in what is now known as the Manly district, but which they knew as "Kay-ye-my". They fished in the pure sparkling waters, gathered food in the dunes and swamps, and hunted in the eucalypt forests and open heath country."
Many petroglyphs depicting various sea and land creatures, canoes and other aboriginal equipment, in cultural sites around demonstrate the aboriginals' cultural advance. Curby, ibid p 19, records that in an encounter between Phillip and the Kay-ye-my people on 28 May 1788, one man took back a crawfish to "the hut". This indicates that huts, as well as shelters, were built for accommodation. indicates that on the hillside above Kay-ye-mai Point (the hillside leading up to the western end of Ivanhoe Park) were "many rock shelters providing cool shade from the hot sun, shelter from prevailing winds or a place to leave a stencilled ochre image of a hand or tool. Along the ridge tops (lying north of Ivanhoe Park) may have been fruiting trees and flowering plants and tall trees with bush honey and mammal life"
While tangible evidence of these activities has not been identified in Ivanhoe Park, its close proximity to the Kay-ye-mai people's gathering place provide strong circumstantial evidence of such use. Further illuminating the Kay-ye-my lifestyle, Virginia Macleod writes: "They controlled vegetation on land by regular burning to flush out prey and create clear glades which facilitated hunting".