Some fascinating historic notebooks recording the first contact between British settlers and Aboriginal people in Australia:

A set of 1788 notebooks recording the first attempts at communication between British settlers and Indigenous Australians reveals language that is still in use in Sydney Aboriginal communities today.

The Dawes notebooks, named for First Fleet officer William Dawes who recorded his discussions with Aboriginal people of La Perouse, are on international loan from the UK for the State Library’s landmark exhibition, Living Language: Country, Culture, Community, which opened [July 13, 2019].

The notebooks include exchanges between Dawes and Woollarawarre Bennelong, as well as his second wife Barangaroo. Bennelong served as an interlocutor between the British and the native people.

“Lieutenant Dawes was just really interested in not just the culture, but getting to know the people and their nuances,” said the Library’s Melissa Jackson, a Bundjalung woman who previously lived in La Perouse.

“I’ve been able to read them before on microfilm – but to see them in the flesh is just very humbling.”

The notebooks are incredibly important to Aboriginal people because they retain the conversational context which is crucial for contemporary language revival work today.

Read more: ‘Something to remember’: 18th century notebooks return to Sydney