[2] Traditionally, they lived as hunter–fisher–gatherers in family groups or clans with ties of kinship, scattered along the coastal area of what is now the Sydney basin in New South Wales.

As Cook's ship hove to near the foreshore, it appeared to the Dharwal to be a white low-lying cloud, and its crew 'dead' people whom they warned off from returning to the country.

[citation needed] There is a public viewing site of one group of engravings at Jibbon Point, showing a whale and a wallaby.

According to an early Dharawal informant, Biddy Giles, [b] these images commemorated notable events, a successful hunt and the stranding of a whale.

[9] [10] The Dharawal people lived mainly by the produce of local plants, fruits and vegetables and by fishing and gathering shellfish products.