Kaurna People - Territory

Territory

Kaurna territory extended from Cape Jervis at the bottom of the Fleurieu Peninsula to Port Wakefield on the eastern shore of Gulf St Vincent, and as far north as Crystal Brook in the Mid North. Tindale claimed clans were found living in the vicinity of Snowtown, Blyth, Hoyleton, Hamley Bridge, Clarendon, Gawler and Myponga. The stringy bark forests of the Mount Lofty Ranges have been claimed as a traditional boundary between Kaurna and Peramangk people. Tunkalilla Beach (keinari), 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Cape Jervis, is the traditional boundary with the Ramindjeri.

This is the most widely cited alignment of Kaurna territorial boundaries. However the neighboring Ramindjeri tribe assert a historical territory including the whole southern portion of the Fleurieu Peninsula and Kangaroo Island, extending as far north as Noarlunga or even the River Torrens. This overlaps a significant portion of the territory claimed by both the Kaurna and the neighboring Ngarrindjeri to the east. However, linguistic evidence suggests that the aborigines encountered by Colonel Light at Rapid Bay in 1836 were Kaurna speakers. Ronald and Catherine Berndt's ethnographic study, which was conducted in the 1930s, identified six Ngarrindjeri clans occupying the coast from Cape Jervis to a few kilometres south of Adelaide. Berndt posits that the clans may have expanded along trade routes as the Kaurna were dispossessed by colonists.

A main Kaurna presence was in Tarndanyangga ("red kangaroo rock place") near the River Torrens and the creeks that flowed into it, an area which became the site of the Adelaide city centre. Kaurna also resided in the Burnside Suburb area; an early settler of the village of Beaumont described the local people thus:
At every creek and gully you would see their wurlies and their fires at night ... often as many as 500 to 600 would be camped in various places ... some behind the Botanic Gardens on the banks of the river; some toward the Ranges; some on the Waterfall Gully.