Wurundjeri

In the Woi wurrung language, the manna gum (Eucalyptus viminalis) was woiwurru: the dominant tree of the Yarra River valley and the high country above it. Inside its bark lived djeri, the witchetty grub of the genus Cossus, a source of food and a creature intimate with that specific tree. The people who called themselves Wurundjeri took their name from both, identifying with the insect and the plant together.

The Wurundjeri were one of five language groups forming the Kulin Nation in what is now central Victoria. Their country ran along the Birrarung, the river the colonists later renamed the Yarra, from the coast to the Dividing Range: a territory of grassy woodlands, river flats, and volcanic plains. They organised themselves into clans, the Willam along the lower river and the Gunung-willam in the ranges above. Each clan held specific knowledge of its country.

In June 1835, the Merri Creek headmen signed a document with the merchant John Batman, exchanging 600,000 acres for goods including blankets and flour. Governor Sir Richard Bourke voided the treaty within months, declaring that Aboriginal Australians could not sell land they did not legally own under British law. The Wurundjeri had negotiated; the colony had overridden the negotiation and taken the country anyway.

William Barak (Beruk), born around 1824, became the last senior elder of the Wurundjeri Willam clan and spent decades at Coranderrk Station near Healesville petitioning the government for land rights. He was also a painter whose bark works documented Wurundjeri ceremony. He died in 1903, but Coranderrk remained occupied by Wurundjeri descendants, who secured it against repeated government attempts at closure.