Eora people

The Eora (Yura), named by British officers for the harbour clans of the Sydney basin, fished the estuaries and hunted the sandstone country where Australia's largest city stands. They spoke a Darug dialect, inland Darug kin holding the western basin. Radiocarbon counts thirty thousand years of harbour life, and western Sydney gravels hold tools fifty thousand years old. The First Fleet's bridgehead brought smallpox that emptied the coves within months; dispossession finished what disease began, and traditions, language and social system were mostly lost. Descendants live on in La Perouse and across Sydney, fishing the same bays, dancing the harbour ceremonies back into being, and teaching Eora language in schools built over the old camps. Darug kin still hold the western Sydney basin. Coastal clans still walk the harbour foreshores. Fifty-thousand-year-old tools still surface in western gravels. Descendants still live around the harbour today. British officers' journals still name the Eora clans.