Nawu

The Nawu were an Aboriginal people of the south-western Eyre Peninsula in South Australia; the Battara and Gnowoo recorded by early settlers were Nawu groups. Their country once stretched from the Gawler Ranges toward Port Augusta, but the expanding Banggarla pushed them south before European settlement. Their language was closely related to Wirangu within the Pama-Nyungan family.

From the early nineteenth century sealers based on Kangaroo Island raided their coasts and kidnapped Nawu women, and after South Australia was proclaimed in 1836 pastoral settlement spread onto their lands. Oral tradition recalls the Waterloo Bay massacre near Elliston, in which a large group of Aboriginal people are said to have been driven over the cliffs into the sea.