In the first season conclusion to 2SER’s History Lab podcast series, Tamson Pietsch and Historian Anna Clark look back at the indigenous fisherwomen who once occupied the site of the Sydney Opera House.
Clark is herself an avid fisher and author of The Catch, a book tracing the history of fishing in Australia.
Pietsch and Clark take their listeners on a journey around Sydney’s world famous landmark and discover that this is where huge middens of shellfish once existed. Indigenous women in their nawi canoes collected the shellfish while singing traditional songs in Dharug.
In a first for the History Lab podcast, and perhaps for the first time since the 18th century, the fisherwomans song is translated and sung by Dharug speaker Maddison Lyn Collier.
Episode 5: Fishing for answers, is available on all podcast apps or on the 2SER website
Other episodes in the series are
- Lindy Chamberlain and the Afterlife of Evidence
- Damages for a broken heart
- When the Titanic sunk in the desert
- The Making of History Lab