Gunditjmaran

The Gunditjmaran are the Gunditjmara, a people of south-western Victoria whose country centres on the volcano Budj Bim; their name joins a word for country or locality with mara, “man”.

In 1337 they were already river-and-lake people managing one of the most elaborate aquaculture systems on the continent: across more than a hundred square kilometres of volcanic wetland they raised stone dams, canals, weirs and woven-basket traps to farm the eel they call kooyang, with stone-house settlements beside channels dug thousands of years earlier.

Their Dreaming tells how the “High Head” creator Budj Bim rose from the volcano and his lava flows became the wetlands. Whalers and sealers began using Portland from 1810, bringing epidemics; from 1834 the Henty brothers settled the district, opening the Eumeralla guerrilla wars that earned them the name “Fighting Gunditjmara”.