Yuin

The Yuin are a nation of Aboriginal Australian peoples on the South Coast of New South Wales, their clans holding the coast from Nowra south past the Moruya River towards Cape Howe. Their related dialects form the Yuin language group, and religious life centred on the creator Darhumulan and the Bunan male initiation ceremony.

Before 1788 perhaps eleven thousand people lived between Batemans Bay and Cape Howe by fishing, shellfish gathering and canoe travel. At Twofold Bay the Yuin hunted in co-operation with killer whales. Smallpox struck them in 1789 and again in 1830, while whalers and settlers moved into the coast between 1810 and 1830, bringing disease and closing in on Yuin lands.