Ngarrindjerin

The Ngarrindjerin are the Ngarrindjeri, related peoples of the lower Murray River, eastern Fleurieu Peninsula and Coorong lagoons in South Australia, their name meaning “belonging to men”. Their riverine country supported semi-sedentary life in fixed summer and winter camps.

They wove bulrush fibre into fishing nets and into emu nets more than a hundred metres long. All the clans gathered at Pomberuk for corroborees and at Tagalang to trade. They taught that the water spirit Muldjewangk seized anyone who took more than his share of fish.

Whalers and sealers raided their coast for women from 1802 and camped on Kangaroo Island by 1819. Smallpox swept away much of the population before Charles Sturt's expedition of 1830 found them familiar with firearms; when South Australia was founded in 1836, Ngarrindjeri crews worked the Encounter Bay whaling station.