Battara

Battara is a name recorded for an inland group of the Eyre Peninsula, associated with country where scrubby gums grew. Some accounts connect the name with Barngarla-speaking people, while other classifications place Battara with the Nawu, whose centres lay in the scrub gum forests of the south-western coast.

The Nawu country ran from Cape Radstock north beyond Minnipa and east toward Darke Peak, taking in the coast around Elliston, Coffin Bay and Port Lincoln. In 1802 Matthew Flinders surveyed this coast in the Investigator and named Port Lincoln and Coffin Bay. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, sealers working from Kangaroo Island raided the southern coast and carried off many Nawu women, while the Barngarla pressed on the Nawu from the north.