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Koori/Koorie (the spelling of the name changes in a number of documents) is the name preferred by indigenous people living in Victoria, rather than 'aborigine' the generic term for native inhabitants.
The work of Gary Presland is the one of the most quoted when searching for information about the history of indigenous society in the Western suburbs of Melbourne. In his booklet THE FIRST RESIDENTS OF MELBOURNE'S WESTERN REGION (Revised edition) Gary provides us with the following information:
"In traditional Koorie societies, such as that of the first resident of the western region, there were several levels of social organisation. The most important social grouping was the clan. Like Scottish clans, Koorie clans were based on family connections; those members who were born into the clan traced their descent from a common ancestor. It was usual for men of the clan to seek marriage partners from other clans. All members of a clan identified themselves with a particular tract of land, referred to as their estate. Because of this connection, it was the clan which was the landowning group in Koorie society.
At a higher level of social organisation within Koorie society, tribes can be identified. In areas where the estates of a number of clans bordered one another, and the members of these clans spoke the same language, the collective formed the socio-political grouping usually referred to as a tribe. An alternative term for these units which is more correct is language group.
At the time of European settlement, in the area now covered by the city of Melbourne and its suburbs, and stretching as far west as Melton, there were three different but related tribes, each made up of a number of individual clans. Within the western region at the time Europeans arrived, there were four such clans, representing all three tribes. One tribe was the Woiworung, composed of five clans, two of which claimed area in the western region. The first of these clans was the Marin.balluk and its estate was all the area between Kororoit Creek and the Maribyrnong River, stretching up to Sunbury. The area to the west of Kororoit Creek as far as the Werribee River was the estate of the Kurung.jang.balluk clan. Their clan area or estate took in the area where Melton now lies, including the appropriately named locality of Kurunjang.
Clans from two other tribes also claimed parts of the western region. These tribes were the Bunurong and the Wathaurung. Most of the six clans of Bunurong speakers lived on the Mornington Peninsula and around Western Port Bay. However, the estate of one of these clans included a strip of land which stretched around the top of Port Phillip Bay to the Werribee River. This narrow strip, perhaps a few kilometres wide, was part of the estate of the clan named Yalukit.willam and would have taken in all of Williamstown, most of Altona, and the southern parts of Footscray, Sunshine and Werribee.
The Wathaurung language group of fifteen clans claimed the area from the western side of the Werribee River to Streatham. Within the western region, one of these clans, called Marpeang.bulluk, occupied the land between the Werribee and Little Rivers. The fifteen Wathaurung clans were allied with the Port Phillip clans, particularly those of the Bunurong, and the strip of land around the top of the Bay probably allowed people to move back and forth between their estates without having to trespass into Woiworung territory.
In each of the Woiworung, Bunurong and Wathaurung clans there was a Ngurungaeta or head man, who had authority over other clan members, and who represented the clan at tribal meetings. The Ngurungaeta of the Marin.balluk at the time Melbourne was founded was a man named Bungarim. This individual was one of the guardians of the well-known quarry at Mount William, which was the major source of stone for making ground-edged axes. The name of Bungarim also appears as that of one of the 'chiefs' on John Batman's deed of purchase. In the Kurung.jang.balluk clan, the head man at the time of European settlement was Bet banger.
In the Yalukit.willam at the same time, there were two men, Derremart and Eurenowel (or Benbow), who had particular importance in the clan. Both of these men were in the group of Koories who warned John Pascoe Fawkner of an intended attack on the white settlement in October 1835. Of course, the name of Derremart is now well known (although spelt differently), and preserved as the name of an area within the City of Brimbank." (Presland. 1997, Pp 4/5).
Susan Priestley, a historian who has written a number of local history books, chronicles the decline of Derremart in Altona A Long View:
"William Thomas recorded Derremart's frequent drunkenness from the end of 1839 and his deep sense of fatalism a few years later.
You see...all this mine, all along here Derrimut's (as written) once; no matter now, me soon tumble down? Why me have lubra? Why me have piccaninny? You have all this place, no good have children, no good have lubra, me tumble down and die very soon now.
His final prediction did not come to pass for another twenty years. But he seems to have forsaken the Werribee country, particularly after the deaths of his peers, Bet banger in July 1847 and the venerable Eurernowel three months later. Thereafter, Derremart seems to have lived close to the You-ruk, perhaps because of its spiritual significance. J.B. Copper's history of Prahran recalls something of his later years. Throughout the 1840's and 1850's, the district was still dense bush with no roads, only tracks. Birds, Kangaroos and possums abounded, and a long lagoon which covered the site of the Prahran Town Hall attracted the usual rich assortment of game. At least three Aboriginal camps are remembered as being in or close to the existing Fawkner and Alma parks. The swamp which is now Albert Park Lake was also likely to have provided good hunting. Then, as building encroached on the area in the late 1850's. Aboriginal resources became scarcer and Derremart, his two female kin and his dogs faced leaner times. They were regarded with a mixture of apprehension, puzzlement, pity and respect when they walked the newly carved streets of Prahran.
J.B. Fawkner, himself a survivor of oppressive authority, kept in contact with Derremart and apparently tried to persuade him to 'retire' to one of his properties. Therein may lie part of the explanation of why Fawkner bought land in 1850 in the Parish of Truganina, which encompassed the southern end of the country between the Kororoit and Skeleton Creeks. He also bought a small block in Deutgam Parish west of Skeleton Creek. By 1864, the Truganina square mile block had its north-west corner carved away by the angled junction of the Geelong and Kororoit Creek Roads and was part of Alfred Langhorne's estate.
Derremart steadfastly refused all of Fawkner's offers to move. It was acknowledged that there was something noble in his unwillingness to exchange the freedom of his own domain for charity, however well-meant. He was carried away from You-ruk only when in a dying condition. The end came on 30 April 1864 shortly after he was admitted to the Benevolent Asylum in North Melbourne. Perhaps it was inevitable that white blundering did not end there. Over his body, interred in the Melbourne General Cemetery according to European rather than Aboriginal rites, a gravestone was erected wrongly labelling him 'the last of the Yarra tribe'. The Bunurong arweet of the Yalukit-willam had tried for thirty years to accommodate the old culture and new ways. The gravestone recorded only that he 'saved' the Yarra settlement in 1835. Derrimut land Parish which echoes his name is to the north of Truganina Parish and probable encompasses some of the clan estate." (Priestley. 1988, Pp. 24/25).
Dr John Lack is a Senior Lecturer in History at Melbourne University, in his book A History of Footscray John describes the rapid decline of the local Koori population:
"The common cold and influenza decimated the Kooris. Venereal disease caused the birthrate to plummet. In the entire Port Phillip District (Victoria) a Koori population in the range 8,000 to 15,000 in 1835 fell to around 5,000 by 1850, that is by between one-third and two-thirds. The two major tribes in the Melbourne region had numbered around 300 in 1835; by 1853 there were a mere thirty-three remaining. There had been only twenty-eight births in over twenty years. Disease was not entirely to blame." (Lack. 1991, p19).
Lack, John. 1991, 'Traditional Koori Society/The Destruction of Koori Society' in A History of Footscray, Hargreen Publishing Company, North Melbourne, Victoria
.Presland, Gary. 1994, The Land of the Kulin: Discovering the lost landscape and the first people of Port Phillip, McPhee Gribble, Penguin Books, Australia.
Presland, Gary. 1997, The First Residents of Melbourne's Western Region, Revised Edition, Harriland Press, Forest Hill, Victoria.
Priestley, Susan. 1988, Clans of the Kulin in Altona A Long View, Hargreen Publishing Company, North Melbourne, Victoria.
Walsh, Larry. 1996, STILL HERE: A brief history of Aborigines in Melbourne's western region up to the present day, Melbourne's Living Museum of the West, PO Box 60, Highpoint City, Victoria 3032.