Hidden in Plain View

Aboriginal people are prominent in accounts of early colonial Sydney, yet we seem to skip a century as they disappear from the historical record and reemerge in early in the twentieth century. Paul Irish’s Hidden in Plain View explores what happened in the interim. How did Indigenous people come to be ignored in colonial narratives? In this original and important book, he brings this poorly understood period of Sydney’s Aboriginal history back intofocus.



Irish tells the compelling story of the Aboriginal presence in the heart of Sydney during the nineteenth century and reveals the complex relationship between Aboriginal people and the growth of Sydney. He shows that Aboriginal people were not pushed out of the way by urban expansion and charts how they developed cross-cultural relationships and established links with the settler economy.



Hidden in Plain View reminds us that Aboriginal people have always been part of the physical and historical fabric of Sydney.