Local histories of the Willunga area acknowledge the presence of Kaurna people here at the time of European settlement, but pay scant attention to any continuing Aboriginal presence in subsequent decades.
It is as if the Aboriginal people just disappeared or melted away, leaving just a few stone tools or a skeleton here and there, and a few quaint and melodious place-names. Historical sources, however, show that there were some Kaurna people living in the Willunga area in the decades immediately after European settlement, and that Aboriginal people from Point McLeay were occasional visitors to the area later in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In this talk I will discuss the Aboriginal history of the Willunga area after European settlement and present biographical sketches of some of the Aboriginal people who lived or worked here.
By Tom Gara who has worked for several decades as an historian specialising in Indigenous History.
