Sackville Reach Aboriginal Reserve

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Sackville Reach Aboriginal Reserve was on the Hawkesbury River near Windsor, New South Wales. It was established in 1889 by the NSW Aborigines Protection Board.

The land was in the Parish of Meehan, County of Cook, and was officially recorded in reserve numbers AR 23,957 (gazetted 25 March 1896 – 15 December 1900), AR 23,958 (25 March 1896 – 17 May 1946) and AR 28,546 (26 November 1898 – 17 May 1946). The reserve was run by the Aborigines Protection Board from 1889 to 1940 and by the Aborigines Welfare Board from 1940 to 1946.

The two main families on the reserve were the Everinghams and the Barbers. Andrew Barber was the last resident; his father John Barber, a Darkinjung man, and his wife Ballandella, a Wiradjari woman, lived there. There is disagreement about John Barber’s people: some say he was Darug, others Darkinjung. Some researchers have argued that all Aboriginal people in the Sackville area were Darug, while others, including researchers who say John Barber and the Sackville people were Darkinjung, contest that view.

Several missionaries supervised the reserve, including Retta Dixon (1901–1903), Maud Oldrey (starting 1903), Annie Lock, and Emily Buttsworth (1906–), until 1910 when the Protection Board ruled that female missionaries could not live alone on reserves.

An obelisk memorial at the site, placed by Percy Gledhill, is inscribed: “To the Aborigines of the Hawkesbury for whom this area was originally reserved.”