Wadawurrung Erotic

The Wadawurrung are the Aboriginal people of the country west of Port Phillip Bay. Older books usually spell the name Wathaurong, and some local organizations still use that form. Their land takes in Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula, the Surf Coast and the plains running north to Ballarat, with the Werribee River marking the eastern edge. They are one of the five nations of the Kulin alliance, and that shapes how they see themselves. Kulin peoples share a system that divides everyone into two halves: Bunjil, the wedge-tailed eagle and creator, and Waa, the crow. People traditionally married someone from the other half, so clans in different nations were bound together by family ties, trade and ceremony.

Their language, also called Wadawurrung, belongs to the Kulin group of the Pama-Nyungan family. It shared a lot of vocabulary with Woiwurrung and Boonwurrung, spoken by neighbors around the bay. Like other Kulin language names, it joins the local word for no to wurrung, meaning mouth or speech. The country was held by a network of clans, each tied to its own rivers, hills and coastline. People moved with the seasons between eel runs, shellfish beds and fields of murnong, the yam daisy whose roots were a staple across southern Victoria. Near Little River stands Wurdi Youang, an egg-shaped ring of basalt stones. Researchers have proposed that it lines up with the setting sun at certain times of year.

The Wadawurrung show up early in Victoria's written history through an unlikely witness. William Buckley, a convict, escaped the short-lived 1803 settlement near present-day Sorrento. Wadawurrung people took him in, reportedly believing he was a dead kinsman who had returned. He lived with them for 32 years, then walked into the camp John Batman's party had set up at Indented Head in 1835. What followed was fast and brutal. Settlers with sheep took over the grasslands within a few years, and the 1851 gold rush at Ballarat and Buninyong flooded the north of their country with miners. Disease, violence and the loss of their land left only a small number of survivors.

The Wadawurrung did not disappear. Descendants still live on and around their country. The Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation is the recognized heritage authority for the region, and the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative runs health and community services in Geelong. The city's own name is usually traced to Djillong, a Wadawurrung name for the area. Efforts to revive the language draw on word lists written down in the nineteenth century. Smoking ceremonies and newly made possum-skin cloaks are now a regular part of public life on their land.