Bloody Point was a place marked on a map in 1788, but soon after erased and forgotten. The words were written on an early draft of a chart of Sydney Harbour by a junior officer of the First Fleet lieutenant William Bradley. But they didn’t make it past his superior on HMS Sirius, Captain John Hunter. The site of the first confirmed deaths of colonists at the hands of Aboriginal people may not have been the sort of event the colonists wanted reminding of, or the kind of place-marking that would go down well back in England.

After Hunter excised it from the first charts of Port Jackson, the name "Bloody Point" languished in a family collection for 230 years or so until Bradley’s log book was donated to the Australian National Maritime Museum last year. Bradley gave the name "Bloody Point" to the piece of Wangal land jutting out at the end of what is now Iron Cove in Sydney Harbour. Today, hundreds of joggers on the Bay Run thunder past, their footsteps pounding over the site where the bodies of two convicts killed by Aboriginal men were found in May 1788; a site where, after a period of growing conflict during the first months of 1788, the first major acts of resistance against colonists had begun.

Detail from the 1788 chart of Port Jackson drawn by William Bradley showing Bloody Point. Credit:Australian National Maritime Museum

The second anniversary of the declaration of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and a new government have reignited interest in the statement's call for a Voice to Parliament. As NAIDOC Week 2019 draws near, it’s theme reminds us of three key elements to the reforms set out in the Uluru Statement: Voice. Treaty. Truth. As powerful as the first two are; truth must not be neglected. The Uluru Statement seeks "a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations". It also calls for "truth-telling about our history".

Lasting, effective and meaningful political agreements between government and First Peoples require a shared and truthful understanding of the past. Even the recognition of the history of a small piece of Sydney landscape as "Bloody Point" has broader implications in processes of truth-telling. Understanding the events and recognising the site forces us to think about the complex relationship between resistance and retaliation, between warfare and massacre.