Prehistory
by Ananda Braxton-Smith
In the beginning the land was without shape. Bundjil, the great spirit, took the form of an eagle. He cut
strips of bark and carved figures of people into them. He then quickened them with his breath. With
Mindeye the Rainbow Serpent, and other creation heroes, he sculpted the land and made it good
country for human beings. Then Bunjil and the others settled the people all round South-Eastern
Australia. T he country we see today formed over 300 million years,
through a succession of rising and sinking seas, rollercoasting
heat and cold, and 700,000 years of volcanic activity
and dormancy. This activity only stopped 7,500 years ago,
but the Melbourne area has been populated for at least 40,000 years,
mostly by the Kulin people and their ancestors. That's about 1,600
generations. Over the volcanic era these people witnessed eruptions that
hurtled molten rock and ash into the sky, blanketing Lilydale to Ferny
Creek and sending rivers of sulphuric lava and rock flowing past Upper
Ferntree Gully, toward Wantirna.
40,000 years ago the climate was much like today. However, imagine that after 25,000 years of an iceage
the coastline is now 300 km to the South, and Tasmania and New Guinea are part of the Australian
continent. The cold has allowed ferns, bracken and other cold-adapted plants to colonise the plains, and
some places are thick with peat and bog moss. Across plains of icy bogs the people hunt a species of
‘roo' that stands three-and-a-half metres tall, and a donkey-high type of wombat. Diprotodon, the
marsupial herbivore the size of a rhinoceros lumbers among beech and fern. Most of these megafauna
are herbivores, so although they are huge they are not dangerous. Although sometimes an unlucky
hunter in a dark, cold corner of the forest would find himself confronted with the carnivore Thylacoleo,
the marsupial lion; an ancestor of today's possum but as big as a leopard and with ‘large, shearing
teeth'.
Then the land was flooded. Barwool the Headman cut the Birrarung (Yarra River) to free the country
from the flood. The waters flowed into the plain where they had hunted kangaroo, and created Narrm
(Port Phillip Bay).
The country we know today, from the Dandenong Ranges to the Heads, has all formed in the past
5,000 years. After the volcanic era, Eucalypts flourished in the rich soil, along with ferns and tree ferns,
wattle, shrubs and grasses. By 1830 the dominant forest flora included the mountain grey-gum,
messmate and long-leaf box, with a thick undergrowth of tree-fern, wattle, bracken and heath.
When Europeans settled Victoria, one group of Kooris owned all the land around Port Phillip and up
north to Euroa. Composed of individuals belonging to five tribes, or sub-language groups, this was the
Kulin nation-pronounced ‘cullin' and taken from the tribes' shared
word for ‘human being'. Two tribes of the Kulin made the
Dandenongs part of their country: the Boonerwrung and the
Woiwurrung. They came in summer to evade the heat, and to be
‘healed' in the creeks and streams. The tribes built temporary shelters
from bark and tree-limbs, and stayed as long as food was plentiful,
which was generally about two months. They hunted possum using
every part for something: the meat eaten, the skins sewn together with
bone needles to make cloaks. Even the sinew was used as cotton in
the needles. The Boonerwrung and the Woiwurrung entered the
Dandenongs by several routes, one being along the creek-beds
through Upper Gully. Pioneers encountered small family groups of
the tribes as they passed through to their seasonal hunting grounds, up
to the end of 1800. Up to 1870 the Dodd family of Olinda regularly
saw these clans in the area. From 1862 officials began moving the
Woiwurrung out to Healesville where an Aboriginal settlement had
been established, called Coranderrk.
After settlement, European-Australians also found relief from
summer's heat, and a ‘healing' in the Dandenongs. They came by
horse-drawn wagon, then later by train, then by car to walk in the
forest, picnic, fish and swim. Like the Kulin families in earlier days,
Joyce Summers [page 46] swam and fished for eels in Upper Gully's
creeks, and Eunice Stone [page 45] ‘wandered all over the hills,
thinking nothing of walking to Olinda or Sassafrass via the Devil's
Elbow.' By the time Nelsa Atkinson [page 14] was walking and
playing in these creek-beds, new flora was establishing itself.
Blackberry clambered, or choked depending on your view, its way
through the landscape, followed by ivy, holly and the insidious
sycamore. Coranderrk was closed in the early 1900s, but there is still
a Koori presence near Healesville. Barak, the last of the Woiwurrung
died at 85-years-old at Coranderrk in 1903.
This story was taken from "Memories - A pictorial and oral history of Upper Ferntree Gully"
Bibliography and Attributions - Prehistory/Kulin pages
The item regarding the environment and habits of the Kulin nation was informed by the following texts and conversations:
- ‘Aboriginal Tribes'- an unattributed article in Ferntree Gully Library Information File
- McGivern, Muriel. Aboriginal of the Dandenong Mountain. Published by the author, Croydon, Australia, 1979
- Punshon, Marianne. ‘Wantirna - a history'. http://www.templetonps.vic.edu/pages/history.htm
Accessed March 2006
- Tindale, Norman B. Map 2 SE Australia ‘Tribal Boundaries in Aboriginal Australia'. Australian National University
Press, Canberra, 1974, Map held La Trobe Reading Room, Victorian State Library, Melbourne, Australia.
- ‘Aboriginal Australia: Aboriginal People of Victoria'. Published for the Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander
Commission by the Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra 1990. Reprint 1998
- Presland, Gary. Aboriginal Melbourne: The Lost Land of the Kulin People Harriland Press, Forest Hill 3131
Australia 2001
With special thanks to Judy Williams, Librarian at the Koori Heritage Trust at 295 King Street,
Melbourne.