Wurundjeri

The Wurundjeri are a Woiwurrung-speaking people of the Kulin nation and, with the Boonwurrung, the traditional owners of the Yarra River valley, the country they call Naarm. Their clans camped along the Yarra and at Bolin Bolin lagoon, taking eels, fish and possum; firestick farming kept open plains thick with murnong yam daisies, the staple starch root.

They worked the Mount William greenstone quarry, whose axe heads were traded as far as New South Wales and Adelaide, and joined Kulin assemblies for ceremony, trade and marriage.

In 1835 John Batman met their ngurungaeta chiefs, including Bebejan and Billibellary, at Merri Creek and, after a tanderrum ceremony, obtained the agreement later called Batman's Treaty. The colonial government annulled it, yet the treaty was used to seize some 600,000 acres, and within a few years most of the Wurundjeri river country had been taken.