Guide to Woy Woy New South Wales Australia

Woy Woy – part of the City of Gosford – is wedged on a peninsula between the western shores of Brisbane Waters and the Brisbane Waters National Park, providing magnificent views of the waterways.

The words ‘Woy Woy’ reputedly come from the language of an Aboriginal group called the Guringgai (or Kuringgai). It is said to mean deep water or big lagoon – an obvious reference to Brisbane Water. The Guringgai once occupied the land from the Hawkesbury in the south to Lake Macquarie in the north. It is known that the tribe wore possum hair belts (in which they carried their few possessions) and occasionally possum skin clothing. The men carried spears, boomerangs, stone axes, boomerangs and shields and hunted large prey such as kangaroos and fish which they speared. The women collected most of the food – fish (caught on fishing lines), shellfish, fruit, tubers, insect larvae, snakes, lizards and small mammals. When the fish migrated in winter the tribe moved inland to find other food sources.