The remarkable story of Patyegarang, a young Cammeraygal woman, around 15 years old when the British invaded in the 1780s. She met William Dawes, a British colonist and astronomer, and taught him her language, in one of the earliest documented cultural exchanges between Aboriginal people and European colonisers. His notebooks contain one of the only known first hand accounts of the Dharug/Eora language, and were lost for many years.

Follow us on INSTAGRAM and TWITTER @australianarama

SOURCES: The Notebooks of William Dawes, The ABC, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Powerhouse museum of applied arts and science, Australian dictionary of biography, Wikipedia.