Koori coast

Koori connections

... our extended family is still very much alive. I know probably a sixteenth or twentieth cousin on the north coast, and because they're older or younger, I'm their uncle or they're my uncle and aunties. Ossie Cruse, March 2007

Lorraine Brown talks about her family connections:

Let me see, I was born in Bega, my mother was bought up in and around Nowra area - Falls Creek - out from the other side of Nowra. My Grandmother's from Wallaga Lake, my father's from Lake Tyres, I'm from everywhere. ... Well we've got family all up and down the coast.

Family and Koori community connections extend up and down the coast, from as far south as Bairnsdale in Victoria up to Kempsey and further north.

On the reserves there were lots of people from all along the coast and that's why we're all mixed. One big south coast mob but we still know our original family lines and places. Pallingjang Saltwater catalogue. 1997.

Koori elder, Ossie Cruse, says Aboriginal people all over Australia have two things in common: family and 'caring and sharing' - for each other and the environment.

Further Reading: Coastal Custodians. A newsletter that goes out to the Yuin community along the coast and elsewhere, published by the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC). The newsletter informs people on land management issues and features oral histories of local Aboriginal people. (Search for "Coastal Custodians" on NSW DECC website.)