Nillumbik Reconciliation Group

We live on the land of the Wurundjeri People
We acknowledge the traditional owners of this land and the fact that Indigenous land has never been ceded.

NRG is a volunteer-based, non-profit incorporated group committed to furthering the process of reconciliation with Australia's Indigenous peoples – the first Australians. Based in the Shire of Nillumbik, which includes the Melbourne suburb of Eltham and surrounding areas, the Group aims to cultivate and promote the issues of reconciliation in our local region. Click on the links down the left hand side of the page to find out more.

Original website design: Mark Lowrie. NRG logo design: Elizabeth Savage Kooroonya

Last updated: 7th May, 2013

© Copyright 2000 - 2013 Nillumbik Reconciliation Group Inc. Nillumbik Reconciliation Group does not object to its articles being reprinted provided they are not edited and the source is properly acknowledged. However, please note that this website may also contain articles and/or images copyright to other organisations or individuals.

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A Short-lived Reserve

The Chief Aboriginal Protector, George Augustus Robinson fought to secure land for the Wurundjeri people, noting in his diary on May 3rd 1839:

‘Had a long conversation with surveyor Mr. Hoddle. Showed me a map of the county, marked off into allotments comprising I think fully 30 square miles and not a single reserve for the blacks except the mission which I have no wish to retain. I said if that or a similar map was exhibited to the people of England they would at once see the way the natives are treated. Their lands sold from them and no provision made for their maintenance, and this by the government who are bound to protect them.’

It took until 1852 for a 1908 acre Aboriginal Reserve to be formally set aside at Pound Bend. However, gold had been discovered at Warrandyte in 1851 and the Reserve’s future was doomed. The Wurundjeri knew this and decided to hold one last corroboree. The Aboriginal Protector William Thomas described the event held in March 1852 as follows:

‘They had not met for many years and wanted to have once more some corroboree together….and night after night for fourteen days they did indulge themselves.’

However after the corroboree some of the Wurundjeri decided to go on one last walkabout to Melbourne. Not having permission to leave the reserve they were arrested at Bulleen and sent to the Police Paddocks at Dandenong. Others continued to live on creek-side encampments or work on local stations, while others moved to the safety of the Upper Goulburn until land was reserved for them at Coranderrk in 1863. Pound Bend served as a ration station until closed in 1862.

Nillumbik Reconciliation Group, in partnership with Reconciliation Manningham, has erected plaques on two boundaries of the former reserve: at the confluences of Stony Creek and of Anderson Creek with the Yarra River. The plaques were unveiled on 23rd March during the Warrandyte Festival.

You can download a flyer with more information and directions to the sites here.

More extensive information on the plaques, historical notes on the Wurundjeri of the Yarra Valley, and sites of significance around Melbourne are included on a pamphlet that can be downloaded here.

Auntie Di Kerr speaking at the plaque unveiling. Photo: Diana Warrell

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2012 Victorian Community History Awards

Mick Woiwod's Coranderrk Database has received a Victorian Community History Award under the Local History Project category. The awards are given by the Royal Victorian Historical Society and Public Record Office Victoria. This award “recognises activities that enhance access to records of significance to local communities. The project should increase access, awareness and participation in history on a local or community level, including digitising, indexing, cataloguing, resources and original research.”

The citation reads as follows: “Woiwod’s research makes this much more than a compilation. It is a resource kit providing detailed material presented chronologically about Indigenous people at the Coranderrk Aboriginal station near Healesville, designed to serve communities in the Yarra Valley and Victoria generally through libraries. It represents a huge effort in collection, arrangement and interpretation and deserves to be widely used. It also presents new material about the well-known story of Coranderrk’s demise.”

Congratulations to Mick, and thanks for all his work – his knowledge of Wurundjeri history is invaluable.

A booklet listing the awards can be downloaded here (620KB).

All copies of the original print run have now been distributed.

A limited, and probably final, re-print (100 sets) is now available

— $65 per set (plus $15 postage).

(Note: Coranderrk Database is not available as a separate item.)

Double-CD sets, containing the complete text in Word & pdf formats,

are available @ $35 per set (plus $5 postage).

For further information please contact the Secretary.

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THE WURUNDJERI CULTURE RESOURCE KIT

IS NOW AVAILABLE ON DISC

The Wurundjeri Culture Resource Kit has been completely updated and is now available on CD-ROM. (It's no longer available as a photocopied & bound hard copy because the CD format is far more useful, such as for printing multiple copies of the class exercises.)

The kit is primarily targeted at children in the primary years, and as the title implies it is particularly relevant to the Yarra Valley and surrounding areas – Wurundjeri country.

However, other regions would find much that is relevant, and would also see ways in which they would be able to particularise it to their areas.

You can download a preview of the first ten pages here (1MB pdf file). The CD-ROM includes files to print a board game up to A2 size.

The price of the kit is $20 (plus $5 postage).

Please contact the Secretary for further information.

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