Wathaurongi

The Wathaurongi were the Wadawurrung, a nation of the Kulin alliance whose territory centred on Corio Bay and Geelong, taking in the Bellarine Peninsula and running inland toward Ballarat. Twenty-five clans spoke a Kulinic language of the Pama-Nyungan family.

In December 1803 the escaped convict William Buckley came among them from the abandoned Sullivan Bay settlement. The band took him for the resurrected leader Murrangurk, adopted him and in time made him a headman; he lived with them for thirty-two years until he returned to the Europeans in 1835.

That year squatters began pouring into the Geelong district, and Wadawurrung resistance, chiefly raids on sheep, was met with reprisal killings. When the headman Woolmudgin was killed in 1836, his case collapsed in court because Aboriginal people were barred from giving evidence.