Rivers and Resilience

Book excerpt: We started swimming in the Georges River at Liverpool. We were river girls! It was our little stamping ground. - Judy Chester Rivers and Resilience traces the history of Aboriginal people along Sydney's Georges River from the early periods of white settlement to the present. Telling the stories of the river people, it offers insights into Aboriginal history in an urban setting. For centuries Aboriginal people lived along the Georges River. With colonisation, the river's geography forced settlers to leapfrog over its rugged and swampy bends in search of arable land. Aboriginal people retained a hold over some of the land and maintained communities - despite changes caused by the city's growth. Two leading historians investigate Aboriginal communities in this densely settled, but often overlooked, suburban area.