The Aboriginal communities in and around the Botany Bay and Port Jackson area enjoyed and maintained a complex and unique relationship with the land which endured for thousands of years.

During this ongoing relationship between culture and country the land would undergo changes, but non as significant as those changes that would take place in 1788 and in the years to come.

With the advent of the British invasion all this was to change, the fundamental principles of Aboriginal law and lore, which governed Aboriginal society, were to be challenged and decimated. The Cadigal/Wangal people watched with curiosity and trepidation as the invaders ventured onto the land to replenish supplies and explore.

One important historian called Smith in a book written in 2002 stated:

“Kadi or cadi, the heartland of the Cadigal, was the name of a freshwater creek at Camp Cove, just inside the South Head of Port Jackson. In the Sydney language cadi means below, while one name for South Head, burrawara, means ‘up there’. It must have been a great shock to the Cadigal when the crews of three ships’s boats commanded by Governor Phillip spent the night at that beach on 22 January 1788 - that is how it came to be called Camp Cove.”