Battle of Richmond Hill

Background. In 1794, four hundred British settlers moved onto the lands of the Darug people along the Hawkesbury River and began constructing farms. They removed yam beds that Indigenous people had cultivated along the river and planted Indian corn (maize) in their place. The Darug are a nation of Aboriginal Australian clans sharing ties of kinship, country and culture, who in pre-colonial times lived as hunters in the region of present-day Sydney.

Escalating Conflict. The dispossession of Darug lands was followed by a series of raids on settlers, in which Indigenous people took food, clothing, arms and anything else they could carry. Between 1794 and about 1830, the Hawkesbury River area remained a place of conflict between Dharug people and the more than 400 British settlers in the region. In 1795, as the level of conflict escalated, government troops were sent to protect the settlers.

Commemoration and Scholarship. A memorial garden exists at St John of God Hospital Richmond commemorating Aboriginal victims of the battle and of colonial violence across the region. Academic Geoffrey Ford has suggested that the yams concerned were a marsh club-rush (Bolboschoenus fluviatilis) growing along the riverside, and that the Indigenous people living on the river at Richmond Hill were Darkinyung rather than Darug.