The territory of not only the Bunganndidj but also their neighbours the Meintangk, has been revealed, by archaeological explorations, to have been inhabited for some 30,000 years. Coastal occupation around the Robe and Cape Banks attests that habitation from, at a low estimate, 5,800 BP.[1]
Their name comes from Bung-an-ditj, meaning "people of the reeds", which indicates their connection to land and water.[2]
First contact
First contact between the Bungandidj and Europeans occurred in the early 1820s. Panchy from the Bungandidj recounted to Christina Smith the story of the first sighting of ships at Rivoli Bay in either 1822 or 1823, and his mother's abduction for three months before she was able to escape when the ship put in at Guichen Bay.[3]
When Governor George Grey led an expedition of surveyors, overland from Adelaide to Mt Gambier during April–May 1844, the diarist and painter George French Angas who accompanied them, noted that they found, from Woakwine Range onwards, numerous native tracks, and old encampments with abandoned wurlies, and heaps of banksia cones, which were used to make sweet drinks, mud weirs in swamps to catch fish, wicker-work traps to snare birds, and raised platform structures for spotting emus and kangaroos to hunt.[4]
In November 1834 Edward Henty settled near Portland, starting the movement of European settlers and their sheep, cattle, horses and bullocks across the Western plains of Victoria and the south east region of South Australia. Settlement occurred rapidly over the following two decades with significant frontier conflict taking place involving theft of sheep, spearings, massacres and mass poisoning of the natives.[5] Grey's expedition reported encountering very few indigenous people, no more than groups of two or three. The abundance of signs of previous native land use with the scarcity of sighted natives was explained as due to the smallpox, introduced by Europeans in the north, which has spread out, after devastating the Murray tribes and decimated Aboriginal people further south.[1]
There are a number of reports of poisoned flour or damper being given or left for natives in the settlement of Victoria and South Australia at the time.[6] According to the accounts given by Pendowen, Neenimin and Barakbouranu, and narrated to Christina Smith:
"We tasted the mutton, and found it very good; but we buried the damper, as we were afraid of being poisoned."[3]
In 1843 Henry Arthur joined his brother Charles in establishing a sheep run at Mount Schank. Trouble with Buandig people and dingoes, however, drove the Arthur brothers to sell up in 1844. The Hentys also had problems with their Mount Gambier sheep runs with theft of their sheep and shepherds speared to death in 1844. Such heavy losses occurred that the Hentys were forced to withdraw all their flocks from the Mount Gambier run.[citation needed]The Leake brothers on their Glencoe Station also reported problems losing 1,000 sheep from their 16,000 flock during 1845.[7] Hostilities are reported to have continued around the Glenelg River region for the next two years.
Mistreatment of Aboriginal people was at a level in 1845 where the commissioner of police drew attention to the atrocious treatment in the Rivoli Bay District:
"... damper poisoned with corrosive sublimate … [and] driving the Natives from the only watering places in the neighbourhood. The Native women appear likewise to have been sought after by the shepherds, whilst the men were driven from the stations with threats".[8][9]
In 1848, the Avenue Range Station massacre occurred in the Guichen Bay region of South Australia. At least 9 indigenous Bungandidj Wattatonga clan people were allegedly murdered by the station owner James Brown who was subsequently charged with the crime.[10][11] The case was dropped by the Crown for lack of European witnesses. Until that year, blacks were unable to testify under oath.[12] Christina Smith's source from the Wattatonga tribe refers to 11 people killed in this incident by two white men. The cause of the massacre was the theft of sheep for food.[13]
A report by Mr Smith to Dr Moorhouse, the Protector of Aborigines, in April 1851 reveals that "the natives belonging to the Rivoli Bay Tribe (Buandig) are all quiet, and most of them usefully employed in one way or another by the settlers." The report also raises with concern that "infanticide has been and is still practised among the natives here.", and "relations existing between native woman and the Europeans are very discreditable."[14]
As late as 1854, settlers on Bungandidj land still expressed fears of being attacked. The Leake Brothers of Glencoe Station built what they called their 'Frontier House' in 1854 which is described as a 'large homestead with slits in the walls through which rifles could be used against any likely intruder,' according to local historian Les Hill.[15]
Gradually a certain accommodation was made with Buandig people working as station hands, shearers and domestic servants while remaining on their own land.
According to Bell and Marsden, Aboriginal people made wurley encampments on the edge of Kingston and even moved into cottages at Rosetown on Kingston's northern side in 1877. The people often moved camp seasonally gathering and using traditional foods and using the traditional local burial ground. They record that the Blackford Reserve on the Bordertown Road was another locality where Aboriginal people lived until the 1970s.[8] Kingston and Bordertown were the territorial border shared between the Buandig and the Ngarrindjeri.
Today
There are many people in the region who identify as Bungandidj today. Descendants of the Bungandidj and the Meintangk continue to nurture and protect their culture through the Kungari Aboriginal Cultural Association based in Kingston SE.[16]
In 2022 many of the landmarks around Mount Gambier, including the lakes of the dormant volcano known as Mount Gambier, have been dual-named with Bungadidj names. The town of Mount Gambier is as of October 2022[update] not yet dual-named, but is being signposted "Berrin / Mount Gambier", Berrin being the name by which the town is known to its present-day Indigenous inhabitants.[2] The names include:
According to Christina Smith in her 1880 book on the Bungandidj – The Boandik Tribe of South Australian Aborigines: A Sketch of Their Habits, Customs, Legends, and Language -
"The aborigines of the South-East were divided into five tribes, each occupying its own territory, and using different dialects of the same language. Their names were Booandik, Pinejunga, Mootatunga, Wichintunga, and Polinjunga."[19]
The largest clan, according to Smith, was the Bungandidj who occupied country from the mouth of the Glenelg River to Rivoli Bay North (Beachport), extending inland for about 30 miles (48km). Some controversy exists as to which tribe, the Bungandidj or Meintangk, occupied the stretch of land between Rivoli Bay and Cape Jaffa, and in particular which of the two was in possession of the Woakwine Range.[1] The other clans occupied country from between Lacepede Bay to Bordertown.[19] The Bungandidj shared tribal borders with the Ngarrindjeri people of the Coorong and Murray mouth to the west, the Bindjali and Jardwadjali to the north and the Gunditjmara people to the east.
Anthropologist Norman Tindale argued in 1940 and again in 1974 that at the time of European settlement the Bungandidj were under territorial pressure from the Jardwadjali people to the north forcing the Bungandidj territorial boundary south from Gariwerd towards present day Casterton.[20] However the historian Ian D. Clark has challenged Tindale's conclusions, arguing that the ethnohistoric and linguistic evidence does not support Tindale's claims regarding the boundaries between the Bungandidj and Jardwadjali.[lower-alpha 1][21]
Social organisation
The Bungandidj were divided into two marriage classes: Kumite and Kroke, with children being assigned their mother's class. Within the Kumite class there were five major animal totems
Each of these divisions had many animals, plants, and inanimate elements correlated with it. These totemic items were treated as the friend of all members of a totemic clan, and restrictions were imposed on eating species associated with them, except under extreme circumstances when due sorrow and remorse was expressed.[24]
The southerly groups appeared to have a migratory cycle consisting of setting up camps for fishing in the south over the warmer seasons, and then, with the onset of winter, leaving the stormy coasts to hunt and fish inland. Later reports describe their housing arrangements, of mud-daubed wurlies more comfortable than the shepherds' huts later constructed by pastoralists.[25]
Language
The Bungandidj language is a Pama-Nyungan language, and is classified as belonging to the Bungandidj/Kuurn-Kopan-Noot subgroup of the Victorian Kulin languages.[26] Their own name for their language was Drualat-ngolonung (speech of man), or, alternatively, Booandik-ngolo (speech of the Bungandidj).[27] It consisted of 5 known dialects, Bungandidj, Pinejunga, Mootatunga, Wichintunga and Polinjunga.[26] It has recently been studied by Barry Blake.[28]
Related vocabulary in Bungandidj includes: drual (man); barite (girl); moorongal (boy); and ngat (mother)[29]
↑ 'These leave no doubt that Jardwadjali 'is spoken about Horsham, Murtoa, Kewell, Warracknabeal, southerly to Grampians, Balmoral, Cavendish and Coleraine'. Thus, Mathews has included a large portion of territory that Tindale delineated as Buandig.' (Smith 1880, p.15)
Foster, Robert; Nettelbeck, Amanda; Hosking, Rick (2001). Fatal Collisions: The South Australian Frontier and the Violence of Memory. Wakefield Press. ISBN978-1-862-54533-5.
Hill, Les R. (1972). Mount Gambier, The City around a Cave: A regional History. Adelaide: Openbook Publishers.
Stewart, D. (1887). "Mount Gambier"(PDF). In Curr, Edward Micklethwaite (ed.). The Australian race: its origin, languages, customs, place of landing in Australia and the routes by which it spread itself over the continent. Vol.3. Melbourne: J. Ferres. pp.460–465 – via Internet Archive.
The Kaurna people are a group of Aboriginal people whose traditional lands include the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. They were known as the Adelaide tribe by the early settlers. Kaurna culture and language were almost completely destroyed within a few decades of the British colonisation of South Australia in 1836. However, extensive documentation by early missionaries and other researchers has enabled a modern revival of both language and culture. The phrase Kaurna meyunna means "Kaurna people".
Mount Gambier is the second most populated city in South Australia, with an estimated urban population of 33,233 as of 2021. The city is located on the slopes of Mount Gambier, a volcano in the south east of the state, about 450 kilometres (280 mi) south-east of the capital Adelaide and just 17 kilometres (11 mi) from the Victorian border. The traditional owners of the area are the Bungandidj people. Mount Gambier is the most important settlement in the Limestone Coast region and the seat of government for both the City of Mount Gambier and the District Council of Grant.
The Ngarrindjeri people are the traditional Aboriginal Australian people of the lower Murray River, eastern Fleurieu Peninsula, and the Coorong of the southern-central area of the state of South Australia. The term Ngarrindjeri means "belonging to men", and refers to a "tribal constellation". The Ngarrindjeri actually comprised several distinct if closely related tribal groups, including the Jarildekald, Tanganekald, Meintangk and Ramindjeri, who began to form a unified cultural bloc after remnants of each separate community congregated at Raukkan, South Australia.
The Ramindjeri or Raminjeri people were an Aboriginal Australian people forming part of the Kukabrak grouping now otherwise known as the Ngarrindjeri people. They were the most westerly Ngarrindjeri, living in the area around Encounter Bay and Goolwa in southern South Australia, including Victor Harbor and Port Elliot. In modern native title actions a much more extensive territory has been claimed.
Port MacDonnell, originally known as Ngaranga is the southernmost town in South Australia. The small port located in the Limestone Coast region about 477 kilometres (296 mi) southeast of Adelaide and 28 kilometres (17 mi) south of Mount Gambier in the District Council of Grant local government area. Once a busy shipping port, the town now relies heavily on its fishing and summer tourism industries, particularly rock lobster harvest industry, proclaiming itself "Australia's Southern Rock Lobster Capital".
Kuringgai is an ethnonym referring to an Indigenous Australian people occupying the territory between the southern borders of the Gamilaraay and the area around Sydney, and an historical people with its own distinctive language, located in part of that territory.
Mount Gambier, also known as Berrin, is a maar complex in South Australia associated with the Newer Volcanics Province. The complex contains four maars, the most well-known one of which is Blue Lake / Warwar. The others are Valley Lake / Ketla Malpi, Leg of Mutton Lake / Yatton Loo and Brownes Lake / Kroweratwari. The complex is partially surrounded by the city of Mount Gambier.
The Jardwadjali (Yartwatjali), also known as the Jaadwa, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Victoria, whose traditional lands occupy the lands in the upper Wimmera River watershed east to Gariwerd (Grampians) and west to Lake Bringalbert.
Bungandidj is a language of Australia, spoken by the Bungandidj people, Indigenous Australians who lived in an area which is now in south-eastern South Australia and in south-western Victoria. According to Christina Smith and her book on the Buandig people, the Bungandidj called their language drualat-ngolonung, or Booandik-ngolo. As of 2017, there is a revival and maintenance programme under way for the language.
Christina Smith (1809–1893), generally referred to as Mrs James Smith, was a teacher and Christian missionary who documented the lives, customs, legends, and language of the Buandig Indigenous Australians who live in south-eastern South Australia and western Victoria.
The Waterloo Bay massacre, also known as the Elliston massacre, was a clash between European settlers and Aboriginal Australians that took place on the cliffs of Waterloo Bay near Elliston, South Australia, in late May 1849. Part of the Australian frontier wars, the most recent scholarship indicates that it is likely that it resulted in the deaths of tens or scores of Aboriginal people. The events leading up to the fatal clash included the killings of three European settlers by Aboriginal people, the killing of one Aboriginal person, and the death by poisoning of five others by European settlers. The limited archival records indicate that three Aboriginal people were killed or died of wounds from the clash and five were captured, although accounts of the killing of up to 260 Aboriginal people at the cliffs have circulated since at least 1880.
The Aboriginal South Australians are the Indigenous people who lived in South Australia prior to the British colonisation of South Australia, and their descendants and their ancestors. There are difficulties in identifying the names, territorial boundaries, and language groups of the Aboriginal peoples of South Australia, including poor record-keeping and deliberate obfuscation, so only a rough approximation can be given here.
The Yapurarra or Jaburara, also rendered Yaburara, are an Aboriginal Australian people whose traditional lands are in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and the Dampier Archipelago.
The Avenue Range Station massacre was a murder of a group of Aboriginal Australians by white settlers during the Australian frontier wars. It occurred in about September 1848 at Avenue Range, a sheep station in the southeast of the Colony of South Australia.
The Meintangk people are an Aboriginal Australian people of south-eastern South Australia, often classified as a subgroup of the Ngarrindjeri people.
The Jarildekald people, also known as Yarilde or Yaralde, are an Aboriginal Australian people of South Australia originating on the eastern side of Lake Alexandrina and the Murray River.
The Tanganekald people were or are an Aboriginal Australian people of South Australia, today classed as part of the Ngarrindjeri nation.
The Marditjali were an Indigenous Australian people, a small tribe distinct from the Jaadwa, whose lands extended from the state of Victoria to South Australia.
The Bodaruwitj, also rendered Bedaruwidj or Potaruwutj, and referred to in some early sources as the Tatiara, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of South Australia. David Horton believed they were the group his sources referred to as the Bindjali people. Austlang refers to Bindjali / Bodaruwitj as alternative names for the same language.
The Ngarkat is a recorded title of a tribal group from South Australia. The Ngarkat lands had linked the mallee peoples of Victoria and South Australia to the river peoples of the Murray River Murraylands. Ngarkat language has been loosely grouped with Peramangk language though not by linguists, and the grouping was perhaps partly owed to the co-ownership of lands in both the Ninety Mile Desert and Echunga by John Barton Hack, and partly to the occasional meeting of tribes. The language of the Ngarkat was recorded as being Boraipur by Ryan in recent times though sources were not given, while it may yet be telling that the citing work concerns Mallee peoples to the east. The language may have been midway between that of mallee peoples to the east, and that of peoples to the west recorded by Teichelmann and Schurman. It is known that songlines linked the Coorong to the Mallee regions, hence went through Ngarkat land. It is also known that Ngarkat people did meet regularly with tribes to the east, at sites along the Murray.
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