Bularidee Tribe

The Bularidee tribe of the Wiradjuri grasslands people ranged the upland Macquarie area from below the Bullen Waterhole to near where the Winburndale Rivulet meets the Macquarie River.
Hill End is situated close to a reliable water supply of the Turon River and further a field in the Macquarie River. This made Hill End an ideal situation for a camp, and the region an ideal area for movement between camps. The availability of stone from riverbeds and supplies of granite and quartz from the valley for the making of their implements added to the attraction of the area.

The Aboriginal people around Hill End had traded with, or shared stone tool forms with, western NSW Aboriginal groups. Examples of trades between tribes discovered 3 miles from Hill End near Tambaroora Creek, where in the early 1960s, road construction workers found 5 stone axes and fragments of a hard black stone usually found in the area.

Early relations documented by the writings of explorers such as Evans, Macquarie and Oxley showed that the Wiradjuri people were ostensively peaceful, displaying signs of fear towards the white parties travelling through their lands. However, the completion of the road to Bathurst in 1815, attracted a rapid increase in grazing stock, and it became apparent that the whites were not temporary dwellers. Minor clashes developed, gradually increasing in violence and frequency.

With the increase in contact between Europeans and the Wiradjuri people, the latter became exposed to European diseases such as measles, small pox and influenza, for which they had no natural resistance. A small pox epidemic killed many Wiradjuri people, especially in the Wellington region. No doubt disease spread beyond this region to the neighbouring Hill End and Bathurst districts.

We know that Aboriginals worked at the gold mines. It is recognised that the gold rush on the goldfields of central New South Wales brought nothing but alcohol and immorality to the Aborigines.