Kulin
Nation | Active
1 CE to 2215 CE
The Kulin nation is an alliance of five Indigenous Australian tribes in south central Victoria, Australia.
Their collective territory extends around Port Phillip and Western Port, up into the Great Dividing Range and the Loddon and Goulburn River valleys.
Before British colonization, the tribes speak five related languages.
These languages are spoken in two groups: the Eastern Kulin group of Woiwurrung, Boonwurrung, Taungurong and Ngurai-illam-wurrung; and the western language group of just Wathaurung.
The central Victoria area has been inhabited for an estimated sixty thousand to one hundred thousand years before European settlement.
At the time of British settlement in the 1830s, the collective populations of the Woiwurrung, Boonwurrung and Wathaurong tribes of the Kulin nation is estimated to be under twenty thousand.
The Kulin live by fishing, hunting and gathering, and make a sustainable living from the rich food sources of Port Phillip and the surrounding grasslands.
Due to the upheaval and disturbances from British settlement from the 1830s on, there is limited physical evidence of the Kulin peoples' collective past.
However, there is a small number of registered sites of cultural and spiritual significance in the Melbourne area.
Related Events
Showing 2 events out of 2 total
It will be thirty years before another settlement is attempted.
Before the arrival of European settlers, humans had occupied the area for an estimated thirty-one thousand to forty thousand years.
At the time of European settlement, it is inhabited by under two thousand hunter-gatherers from three indigenous regional tribes: the Wurundjeri, Boonwurrung and Wathaurong.
The area is an important meeting place for the clans of the Kulin nation alliance and a vital source of food and water.
The area that is now central and northern Melbourne is explored in May and June 1835 by John Batman, a leading member of the Port Phillip Association in Van Diemen's Land (now known as Tasmania), who claims to have negotiated a purchase of six hundred thousand acres (2twenty-four hundred square kilometers) with eight Wurundjeri elders.
Batman selects a site on the northern bank of the Yarra River, declaring that "this will be the place for a village".
Batman then returns to Launceston in Tasmania.
In early August 1835 a different group of settlers, including John Pascoe Fawkner, leaves Launceston on the ship Enterprize.
Fawkner is forced to disembark at Georgetown, Tasmania, because of outstanding debts.
The remainder of the party continues and arrives at the mouth of the Yarra River on August 15, 1835.
On August 30, 1835, the party disembarks and established a settlement at the site of the current Melbourne Immigration Museum.
Batman and his group arrive on September 2, 1835, and the two groups ultimately agree to share the settlement.
Initially the settlement has the native name Dootigala.
Batman's Treaty with the Aborigines is annulled by the New South Wales governor (who at this time governed all of eastern mainland Australia), with compensation paid to members of the association.