Extracts from his keynote address
at the Yarra Deanery Reconciliation Event, held at the Veneto Club
Bulleen, May 2000.
The Kulin Nation was made up of five Aboriginal tribes which took
up a fair swag of land in Central Victoria, centering on Melbourne
itself. The five tribes are the Wathaurong,
of which I am a member, and they are based from the Werribee River,
down to Aireys Inlet, across to Colac, up this side of Lake Corangamite,
up to the back of Ballarat, back down to Bacchus Marsh, and the Werribee
River again.
The Woiwurrung, of which Wurundjeri
are a clan, stood from the Werribee River, around the bay to I think
it's Mentone Creek, up to the Great Dividing Range all the head waters
and the tributaries of the Yarra, down across the ranges and back
across to the Mentone Creek.
The Boonerwrung occupied from
Mentone Creek, down through the Mornington Peninsula, around Westernport,
Phillip Island and as far south as Wilson's Prom. But that is - that's
been argued about at the moment - trying to sort out our own boundaries.
The Taungerong, north of the
ranges, took in all the tributaries and the head waters of the Lodden
and went up as far as Beechworth; from Mount Bulla across to Seymour.
The Dja Dja Wrung, out west
of Ballarat. I don't know a great deal about the Dja Dja Wrung. I'm
still trying to find out everything I can.
So we have five tribes. They were made up of clans, family groups.
And what happened with the five tribes, they had commonalities in
language, custom, traditions, burial rights, and very strong trading
links. And I know with the Woiwurrung and Boonerwrung, they were exceptionally
close, they actually inter-married to strengthen those ties, they
traded between themselves and they were two fairly strong tribes.
Everybody else was fighting amongst ourselves as families do,
but if somebody from outside like a Gunnai from Gippsland or
the Gunditjmara people from down south tried to encroach into our
land, we'd band together and we'd have one hell of a good fight.
That's the Kulin Nation. And it's one of the strongest confederacies
or loose confederacies within Victoria and within Australia as far
as I'm aware of.
Return to Meeting the Kulin
Nation
