The Darug people left their artistic marks on the landscape. They engraved images of animals and mythological figures on sandstone platforms and showcased their ochre and charcoal art in the rock shelters. Moreover, the Hawkesbury region offered access to stones used for crafting axes, as well as pebbles utilised in creating barbs, points, and scrapers. This unique relationship between the Darug tribe and their environment highlights their deep connection to the land and its resources.
This 3,500-year-old ground- edge axe was found along the Hawkesbury River at Windsor. Made of basalt, its edges were formed by grinding it on a sandstone outcrop like the ones found along Redbank Creek. The following text is an extract from an extensive online resource of knowledge and stories from this Country created in 2021 by Grace Karskens, Leanne Mulgo Watson, Erin Wilkins, Jasmine Seymour, Rhiannon Wright, supported by Rob Thomas Grace Karskens, and the State Library of New South Wales.
To explore the interactive story maps and learn more about the Darug people and this Country visit the project website. www.dyarubbin.com
Darug Land 2019, courtesy of the artist, Leanne Mulgo Watson. Dyarubbin, the Hawkesbury River, flows through the heart of a vast arc of sandstone Country encircling Sydney and the shale-soil Cumberland Plain on the east coast of New South Wales. It rushes down from the Southern Highlands through deep gorges, meanders through the green terraces and floodplains, but then re-enters the ranges at Sackville to the north, twisting back and forth through a vast sandstone labyrinth until it reaches Broken Bay and flows into the Tasman Sea.
Dyarubbin (the Hawkesbury River). This long, winding and ancient river has been sacred and life-sustaining to the Darug people for millenia. Darug culture, spirituality and sense of being are all intrinsically connected to it. Dyarubbin has a deep human history, one of the longest known in Australia. Aboriginal people have lived here for around 50,000 years, their ancestors arriving millennia before the last Ice Age. Perhaps those people followed its winding course up from the coast, or walked down into the valley from the Blue Mountains to the west. Their history, culture and spirituality were inseparable from their river Country. Then, a mere two centuries ago, ex-convict settlers took land on the river and began growing patches of wheat and corn in the tall forests. Darug and Darkinjung men and women resisted the invasion fiercely and sometimes successfully, although ultimately overwhelmed by raids and massacres perpetrated by settlers and the military. Between 1794 and 1816, Dyarubbin was the site of one of the longest and most brutal frontier wars in Australian history.
Evidence of tool making by Aboriginal people exists on sandstone platforms along Redbank Creek in the form of grinding grooves. Invasion and colonisation kicked off a slow and cumulative process of violence, theft of Aboriginal women and children, dispossession and the ongoing annexation of the river lands, and ultimately the erosion of Aboriginal culture and language. Yet despite this sorry history, Darug and Darkinjung people managed to remain on their Country, and they still live on Dyarubbin today.
A memorial garden at North Richmond commemorates the Darug people of the Richmond/Hawkesbury area and the Richmond Hill Massacre that occurred in 1795. 
