Bennelong Point is known to the local
Gadigal people of the Eora nation as
Dubbagullee. The point was originally a small
tidal island,
Tubowgule, For a brief period in 1788, this relatively isolated protrusion into
Port Jackson was called
Cattle Point as it was used to confine the few cattle and horses that had been brought from
Cape Town by Governor
Arthur Phillip with the
First Fleet. The area at that time was also strewn with discarded oyster shells from many long years of gathering by the local aboriginal women. Those shells were regathered by the newly arrived convict women and burnt to make
lime for cement
mortar. The point was called '''Limeburners' Point''' for that reason, though those shells only furnished enough lime to make a single building, the two-storey Government House. In the early 1790s, the Aboriginal man
Woollarawarre Bennelong— employed as a cultural
interlocutor by the British—persuaded
Governor of New South Wales, Arthur Phillip, to build a brick hut for him on the point, giving it its colonial name. The existence of the original tidal island and its rubble fill were largely forgotten until the late 1950s when both were rediscovered during the excavations related to the construction of the
Sydney Opera House. Prior to the Opera House's construction, Bennelong Point had housed
Fort Macquarie Tram Depot. ==Gallery==