Dja Dja Wurrung - History

History

The Dja Dja Wurrung were bound to their land by their spiritual belief system deriving from the Dreaming, when mythic beings had created the world, the people and their culture. They were part of established trade networks which allowed goods and information to flow over substantial distances.

There is evidence that smallpox swept through the Dja Dja Wurrung in 1789 and 1825, which would have decimated the population at the time. The epidemics were incorporated into aboriginal mythology as a giant snake, the Mindye, sent by Bunjil, to blow magic dust over people to punish them for being bad.

The trade networks would have carried news of the strange white men settling on the Eora land in the early 1790s and progressively invading peoples further west and south-west of Sydney. Thomas Mitchell was probably the first white man to be seen in Dja Dja Wurrung country when he explored and surveyed central Victoria in 1836, reporting he had found large fertile plains. The invasion of the Goulburn and Loddon Districts began the following year by squatters eager to carve out a station and run.