ABSTRACT
‘The Rocks’ at Sydney Harbour is one of Australia’s most visited colonial heritage attractions. In the repertoire of modern nations it represents the symbolic birthplace. As a place that was quarried from the sandstone edges of the natural harbour, even the contours of the geological bedrock have been transformed. Within this highly inscribed and engineered environment one Indigenous tour group tells of the deeper history of the place and is able to render Indigenous heritage visible with almost no physical resemblance to the precolonial landscape. Despite the absence of the precolonial ‘country’ that underpins Indigenous heritage, The Rocks Dreaming Aboriginal Heritage Tour accomplishes a unique heritage presence and challenges common assumptions about ‘historical evidence’, continuity and discontinuity within dominant heritage management discourse.
