Bedrock, metropolis and Indigenous heritage : rendering 'The Rocks' invisible

In Australia, ‘authentic’ Aboriginal heritage is almost exclusively recognised as ‘pre-colonial’ and non-metropolitan, with traces of such heritage seldom showcased in Australian cities (Hinkson 2003, Byrne 2003). This confinement of ‘authentic’ Aboriginal heritage to pre-contact, rural Australia was commenced by anthropologists in the early twentieth century, but lingers today in the assemblage of State and Federal legislation developed to define and manage heritage. There, heritage is structured into three distinct ‘domains’ or categories: historic, natural and Indigenous. Such structuring, as Byrne and Nugent (2004: 5) observe, submits that ‘Aboriginal heritage has no place in the historic (post-contact) period. It implies, in other words, that Aboriginal heritage properly belongs to the time before 1788, as if Aboriginal culture and history after that date are no longer authentic or “real”’. While the implications of this division are well-explored within the fields of history, archaeology and heritage management, particularly in terms of Aboriginal visibility and representation, less frequently examined are those it has for Australia’s tourism sector, where Aboriginal post-contact heritage in urban contexts seems almost to have ‘permanently departed the scene’ (Byrne and Nugent 2004: 5). Our purpose in this chapter is to argue that the tourism precinct of ‘The Rocks’, located on the western side of Sydney’s iconic harbour, perfectly exemplifies this circumstance. It is earmarked as one of Australia’s most visited colonial heritage tourist attractions and, in the repertoire of modern nations, is understood to represent both British settlement and, crucially, the birthplace of the Australian nation. Urban morphology clearly puts The Rocks at the heart of the global city of Sydney, where it is marketed as the example of the city’s continuity and authenticity, complete with subsurface archaeological features, fragile relics and well-preserved, British-styled original buildings. Settlement, as the most prominent narrative of heritage associated with The Rocks, seems to fill most of the cultural space available for ‘knowing and feeling’ its past (after Watson and Waterton 2017: 49, original emphasis)