Author Description

SACRED WATERS is the account of the dispossession of Indigenous people in the Blue Mountains within living memory, and is one of the winners of the 2008 NSW Premier's History Awards. The Gully, situated in the middle of Katoomba, was used as a summer holiday camp by the Gundungurra and Darug peoples before white settlement. After white settlement many moved to the Gully permanently and in the 1950s when Gundungurra land was flooded for the creation of Warragamba Dam, this process became irreversible. The Gully residents lived in relative harmony with their white neighbours until 1957 when some local businessmen decided to build a car racing track there and the Gully people homes were simply bulldozed - they had no say in the matter and many had no compensation. By recounting the area's Aboriginal history, Sacred Waters also tells the story of Sydney's waterways, used for centuries by Aboriginal people as pathways across the Blue Mountains. The book, written by Dianne Johnson in collaboration with the residents of Katoomba's Gully area and their descendents, was supported by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Sydney Catchment Authority.