Our History

We share the country of the Dharawal and Wadi-Wadi people.

Before European settlement, many Aboriginal groups lived on the NSW south coast. The area from Bulli and Stanwell Park, in the north, to Shoalhaven and Kangaroo Valley in the south was and still is called Dharawal. There were many different Aboriginal groups living in the Illawarra region. The Wadi Wadi people occupied the southern part of the Dharawal area with several camp sites around Lake Illawarra including Berkeley and Hooka Creek. They moved freely throughout the region and shared resources with their near neighbours without fear of trespassing.

Dharawal Nation

The Dharawal people are forever linked to the Australian national heritage as the people of first recorded contact with the British. It was the ancestors of current day community members who first encountered Capt. James Cook and his expedition at Kurnell in 1770.

Lake Illawarra was a valuable source of food and spirituality for the Wadi Wadi people. Burial sites and middens (shell and camp rubbish heaps) discovered at Windang (meaning "battlefield") and surrounding areas indicate that the Wadi Wadi used the area extensively and performed various corroborees and ceremonies here.

Life for the Wadi Wadi revolved around seeking food, finding shelter, participating in ceremonies and managing family matters. Men performed specific hunting duties and ceremonies, and the women were responsible for fishing, gathering food, cooking and rearing the children.

Most families lived in the open, or within gunyahs (bark shelter or hut) or rock shelters, their only clothing consisting of possum skins and personal adornments such as hairbelts and shell necklaces.

Language

There were, and still are, hundreds of different Aboriginal languages spoken on the Australian continent. The Wadi Wadi people spoke a version of the Dharawal language. Many of the town and locality names in the Illawarra have derived from this language - Tongarra, Kiama, Illawarra, Wollongong, Minnamurra (plenty fish), Dapto (broken foot, Unanderra (place of larrikins, Bellambi (no), Towradgi (sacred site), Cringila (pipeclay), Warrawong (side of hill), Bulli (two).

The Wadi Wadi people found time in their day for leisure. Children especially played games of throwing spears at targets and small game. Ball games, using a ball made from soft bark tied with sinew or yarn, were also played. Making animal tracks in the sand was popular and taught the children to recognise the different tracks, a skill necessary for hunting. Games which involved remembering how a group of objects were arranged on the ground helped develop skills in observation.

Swimming and body surfing at nearby Windang Beach were also popular activities. On special occasions, other Aboriginal groups would gather together prompting contests in spear and boomerang throwing and dancing.

European Settlement

The first Europeans to visit the area were the navigators George Bass and Matthew Flinders who landed in Lake Illawarra in 1796. The first settlers in the region were cedar cutters in the early nineteenth century, followed by graziers in 1812. Charles Throsby established a stockman's hut in the area in 1815. The first land grants were made in 1816. Further settlers arrived and in 1834 a town was planned. A road down the Escarpment through Bulli Pass was built by convict labour in 1835-6. By 1856 Wollongong had a population of 864. The Illawarra Railway to Wollongong was completed in 1887, and now continues as far south as the town of Bomaderry on the Shoalhaven River.

The navigator George Bass first documented the Illawarra coal deposits in 1797. There have been many coalmines in the district. Australia's worst coal mining disaster occurred in 1902, at the Mount Kembla mine when an explosion killed 96 men.

See Pictorial History Wollongong for a great history of the region in pictures. Available from Kingsclear Books or news agents in Wollongong.

Commerce and Civics

Heavy industry was attracted to the region by the ready availability of coal. In 1928 Hoskins, later Australian Iron & Steel, started a steelworks at Port Kembla, a few kilometres south of Wollongong. The former Broken Hill Proprietary Company (then BHPBilliton , now BlueScope Steel) acquired AI&S in 1935, but has since spun-out their steel division as a separate company, now known as BlueScope Steel. The steelworks has grown to become a world-class flat rolled steel producer, operating as a fully integrated steel plant with a production of around 5 million tonnes per year. Other industries to have set up in the massive Port Kembla industrial complex—the largest single concentration of heavy industry in Australia—include a fertiliser plant, an electrolytic copper smelter (featuring the tallest chimney in Australia), a locomotive workshop, a coal export shipping terminal, a grain export shipping terminal and an industrial gases manufacturing plant.

The Municipality of Wollongong was founded in 1859. It was incorporated as the City of Wollongong in 1942. The State Government forcibly amalgamated the City of Wollongong with the neighbouring Municipality of Northern Illawarra, the Shire of Bulli and the Shire of Central Illawarra to form the City of Greater Wollongong in 1947. Its name reverted to being simply the City of Wollongong in 1970. Its motto is "Urbs Inter Mare Montemque"—"City Between The Mountains And The Sea". Its corporate slogan is "City of Innovation"