Colebee and Nurragingy Land Grant is a heritage-listed former farm at Richmond Road, Colebee, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is also known as Colebee and Nurragingy's Land Grant, Colebee Release Area, 773, 777 and 783 Richmond Road. The property is owned by Transport for NSW.
History
The history of the Colebee/Nurragingy Land Grant must be understood within the context of the early colonial history of Sydney. The spread of colonial settlement from Sydney Harbour to the western plains occurred quite rapidly within the first 15 years of European arrival in Australia. As British settlers took up allotments, their farmlands expanded to the west across traditional Aboriginal hunting grounds. With this increasing European presence, traditional Aboriginal resources were subsumed and conflict inevitably developed. Conflict between the two communities was particularly prevalent during periods of drought.
A period of drought between 1814 and 1816 resulted in the escalation of violence between settlers and local Aboriginal people, particularly along the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers. When the local Aboriginal people found their traditional food resources gone, they utilised the settlers crops and animals that had replaced them. However, the European settlers, seeing this as theft, often shot Aboriginal people, resulting in subsequent reprisals and violence.
In April 1816 Governor Macquarie responded to the violence by ordering a punitive expedition. Groups of soldiers were sent from Sydney to Cowpastures, the Appin, Parramatta and Windsor districts and along the banks of the Nepean. Governor Macquarie directed the soldiers to capture or kill Aboriginal people involved in the disputes with settlers. A number of Aboriginal guides accompanied these parties, including Colebee and Nurragingy.
Following the punitive expedition of 1816, Macquarie presented Nurragingy with a breastplate inscribed "Chief of the South Creek Tribe" and, in recognition of their involvement in the punitive expeditions, jointly granted Colebee and Nurragingy 30 acres of land. This was the first such grant to be issued to Aboriginal people in Australia's history. The grant was registered in 1819, but was only registered in Colebee's name. Colebee did not stay long on the grant but Nurragingy stayed there growing various crops and practising animal husbandry.
The location of the land grant was significant because it was an Aboriginal choice, being on land belonging to Nurragingy's clan. The land also included sites such as "Iron Bark Range" which was a high campsite well above the flooding of eastern creek and a source of silcrete. Archaeological surveys of the Blacktown (and specifically Plumpton Ridge) area have recorded a range of evidence in this area. The area became a centre of Aboriginal life during this early phase of colonisation.
After the passing of Colebee and Nurragingy, the land was claimed by 1843 by two of Nurragingy's sons and Colebee's younger sister, Maria Lock (also known as Maria Locke) . Maria, a student at the Parramatta Native Institution from 1815, married Robert Locke, a convict from Norfolk, England, in 1824. As the original land grant had been registered in Colebee's name only, the land was passed to Maria, and Maria and Robert along with their ten children took up residence on the land grant. Some time later they also acquired the 30 acre grant to the south that had originally been granted to Sylvanus Williams and had been purchased by the Native Institution in 1822. Maria Locke died in 1878 and was outlived by nine of her children. Following her death, the 60 acres was divided into nine lots for her nine surviving children.
The Locke family lived on the property until around 1917 when the Aborigines Protection Board acquired the land. The Aboriginal Protection Board sold the land off after World War II. When Walter Locke attempted to reclaim the land in 1970 he was informed by authorities that this was not possible, because the family had left the land. In the late 1970s local Blacktown author Kevin Moore wrote a series of pamphlets in which he called this resumption of the land grant "a scandalous malversion of Macquarie's grant for the use of the Aborigines".