An Aboriginal presence in the Djangadi lands has been attested archaeologically to go back at least 4,000 years, according to the analysis of the materials excavated at the Clybucca midden, a site which the modern-day descendants of the Djangadi and Gumbaynggirr claim territory. In the Clybucca area are ancient camp sites with shell beds in the form of mounds which are up to high.
Middens are attested in the
Macleay Valley, together with remnants of a fish trap in the Limeburners Creek Nature Reserve and, just slightly north of
Crescent Head, at Richardsons Crossing, there is a
bora ring. White intrusion on the Djangadi lands first took off as mostly ex-convict cedar cutters, based at a camp at Euroka Creek established by
Captain A. C. Innes in 1827, began exploring the rich resources of the area in the late 1820s. The first European settler in the Kempsey district was named Enoch William Rudder, in 1835, who had purchased a land grant of from its first owner, Samuel Onions. Within a decade the timber cutters had virtually harvested every stand of this highly prized
red gold timber in clearances that made the land increasingly attractive to pastoralists, who by 1847, after the
Crown Lands Occupation Act of 1836 permitted squatting, had established 31
stations along the Macleay river from
Kempsey inland to
Kunderang Brook. This coincided with one of the most violent and sustained examples of
warfare in the Macleay gorges, during which it is estimated that around
15 massacres took place in the region targeting Aboriginal people of the area. The Djangadi and other tribes affected adopted guerilla tactics to fight the usurpation of their land, by attacking shepherds, hit-and-run raids on homesteads and
duffing sheep and cattle livestock before retreating into the gorges where pursuit was difficult. Some 2 to 3 dozen people were killed for rustling sheep at a massacre which took place at Kunderang Brook in 1840. The war ended with the establishment of
a force of native police at Nulla Nulla in 1851. However, by that time, attrition had devastated tribal numbers. Of the 4,000 Aboriginal people in the area before the settlements, one third are thought to have been killed in a little over two decades. A description of the Djangadi and other Aboriginal groups in the Macleay area was given by Captain John Macdonald Henderson in 1851. Some Djangadi settled the Shark, Pelican Island and the two Fattorini Islands in the
Macleay River, gazette as
Aboriginal reserves in 1885, and grew corn there. In 1924 the Fattorini island residents were relocated to Pelican Island, and its status as a reservation was cancelled. Eventually the Djangadi moved to Kinchela Creek Station though an unofficial camp remained at Green Hills, resisting attempts to have them relocated, until they were placed under the administration of a white manager at Burnt Bridge Reserve. Discrimination barriers were finally broken in part when the first Aboriginal children were permitted in 1947 to attend Green Hill Public School, though the white community reacted by shifting their children to West Kempsey. ==Native title==