Cootamundra

Cootamundra occupies a meeting of slopes and plains in the South West Slopes and Riverina country of New South Wales. Muttama Creek cuts through the district, while broad pastoral land and scattered woodland extend around its course. This is Wiradjuri country, and the name is often explained through the Wiradjuri word guudhamang, meaning turtle; a competing account links it to an early colonial property called Coramandra and a ship called Coromandel. The landscape was a named and inhabited Aboriginal place long before survey lines appeared.

The Wiradjuri lived as hunter-fisher-gatherers in family groups, moving along creeks and grasslands that gave water, game and plant foods. British colonists first reached Wiradjuri territory in 1813, at Bathurst far to the north-east, and the slopes around the Muttama stayed on the edge of that frontier for most of the period. Wiradjuri attachment to the country was far older than any colonial claim to it.