It is with great pleasure that we launch our ‘Fine stream, fine meadow’ Cooks River project. Made possible through a Federal Government Your Community Heritage grant, today marks the culmination of a 12 month partnership between the Dictionary of Sydney and Botany Bay City, Marrickville and Canterbury City councils, the Cooks River Alliance, and nine fine writer-historians whose collective works form the heart of this project. Through 14 essays, our authors trace the history of the Cooks River valley from its days as a pristine natural watercourse and lush hunting ground for the Eora people to the high density inner city suburbs and polluted river we know today. Along the way we encounter curious bareknuckle fighters, zoo keepers and weather-hardened fishermen - to name a few. But before any of these characters touch foot on Sydney’s shores, we meet the Aboriginal clans who lived here and who, through disease, destruction and conflict were forced away from lands that formed crossroads for trade, ceremonies and social networking for tens of thousands of years. The thick shell middens found on the floor of a shelter in today’s Earlwood demonstrates the strong and long term attachment of Aboriginal people to the Cooks River area – an attachment that continues to this day.

Some of the characters readers will encounter include ‘The Fighting Hen of the Cooks River‘ who, with her basket-weaving husband Joseph, moonlighted as a bareknuckle fighter in the woods by the Cooks River taking on anyone who was game for ‘a side’; Jim Monk, caretaker of Canterbury Park Racecourse, who looked after a zoo there for over sixty years so patrons could marvel at kangaroos, wallabies, emus, brolgas, curlews, pheasants and kookaburras while the horses sped past; and the English, Scottish and Welsh fisherman who took up residence on the northern foreshores of Botany Bay in the weather-beaten cottages of the village of Booralee, where they thrived for 100 years providing fish for an ever-hungry Sydney town. We hope you’ll enjoy building your own histories as you navigate through the images and hyperlinks. You will find all of the articles here as well as listed below. Over the coming weeks, we will focus in more detail on these and other entries that are new to the Dictionary.

• Aboriginal people of the Cooks River Valley by Lesley Muir
• Bark huts and country estates: European settlement along the Cooks River by Lesley Muir
• From a fine stream to an industrial watercourse: the transformation of the Cooks River Valley by Lesley Muir
• Urban growth in the Cooks River valley by Lesley Muir
• Industry in the Cooks River valley by Lesley Muir
• Canterbury Park Racecourse by Brian Madden and Lesley Muir
• Canterbury Sugarworks by Brian Madden and Lesley Muir
• The Prout’s Bridge incident by Brian Madden and Lesley Muir
• Booralee fishing town by Joanne Sippel
• Damming the Cooks River by Vanessa Witton
• First people of the Cooks River by Paul Irish
• From Sheas Creek to Alexandra Canal by Ron Ringer
• Managing the Cooks River today: The Cooks River Alliance
• Servicing Sydney’s thirst by MacLaren North

We’d like to thank our authors for engaging us so thoroughly in their research. Special thanks to Brian Madden and the Cooks River Alliance for allowing us to publish works by the late Lesley Muir. Lesley was a highly regarded historian and her essays are the centrepiece of this project. We would like to acknowledge the City of Sydney, who are our main sponsors, and our community partners who allow us to illustrate our text with such exceptional images. And last but not least, a big thank you to our hard-working team who have brought all of this marvelous content together, including our former editor Emma Grahame and Executive Office, Victoria Keighery and our tireless Chair, Dr Lisa Murray. The Dictionary is proud to have such talented and dedicated staff (past and present) who, among many talents, also make great cake! Thanks everyone.