On 3 March 2007, ACT Minister Andrew Barr introduced a bill to change the day of Canberra Day to the second Monday in March so it falls closer to the actual birthday of Canberra. Previously it had been held on the third Monday in March.
For 21,000 years the Canberra region has been home to the Ngunnawal people. Evidence of their long occupation exists in archeological evidence found at Birrigai Rock Shelter at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, in rock paintings in Namadgi National Park and in other places throughout the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). When Europeans settled the area in the early 1820s hundreds of Aboriginals lived in the area, meeting regularly for corroborees and feasts and then breaking off into smaller bands.
The Aborigines moved about to take advantage of seasonal foods, such as bogong moths which arrived in their thousands during the summer months.
As elsewhere in Australia, European settlement disrupted Aboriginal patterns of land use and movement across the country, and many Aborigines died from European-brought diseases like influenza, smallpox and tuberculosis.
At the opening of the Tharwa Bridge in 1895, the guest of honour, Ngunnawal woman Nellie Hamilton, said:
I no tink much of your law. You come here and take my land, kill my possum, my kangaroo; leave me starve. Only gib me rotten blanket. Me take calf or sheep, you been shoot me, or put me in jail. You bring your bad sickness 'mong us. Source: Canberra, the Guide, edited by Ken Taylor and David Headon, page 9
Aborigines continued to live in the area, often working on sheep properties, their numbers diminished by illness and starvation, their culture and language in decline.
Canberra, a good sheep station spoiled
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Last updated on Thursday June 19, 2008 at 01:49:45 PDT (GMT -0700)
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