Fleurieu Peninsula Heritage
The history of the Fleurieu Peninsula goes back many, many thousands of years before European arrival and is documented in the rich oral traditions continuing with the Kaurna, Peramangk and Ngarrindjeri.
The estates of the people of the Lower Murray are interlinked with a network of sites that collectively serve to document the creation of their lands, as well as to provide a repository to an encyclopaedic body of knowledge about the plants, the animals, the seasons, the climate and the people's continuing relationship to 'country'.
Ngarrindjeri maintain two centres, both adjacent to the waters of the Coorong and near Meningie. Camp Coorong provides specialist cross-cultural educational forums and cultural displays, while Coorong Wilderness Lodge offers visitors accommodation, café facilities and guided walks.
You may learn of Ngarrindjeri creator spirit Ngurundjeri and of his superhuman feats as he travelled down what was to become the Murray River in a bark canoe, in search of his two wives who had run away from him. At that time the river was only a small stream and Pondi (a giant Murray cod) swam ahead of Ngurundjeri, widening the river with sweeps of its tail. Ngurundjeri chased the fish, trying to spear it from his canoe.
The landscape has been created and traditional custodians continue to take responsibilities for its well-being. Their estates are depicted on the map on the inside front cover of the Fleurieu Peninsula Guide.
In 1802, the English navigator, Matthew Flinders and the French explorer, Nicholas Baudin mapped the southern coast of Australia. They met at a point just off the mouth of the River Murray. Baudin named this region after the eminent French wanderer, Charles Pierre Claret, Comte de Fleurieu. On 8 September 1836, Colonel William Light made his first South Australian landfall on the Fleurieu Peninsula at a place he named Rapid Bay, in honour of his ship. The colony of South Australia was established soon after and today, a bolder at the southern end of Rapid Bay inscribed by Colonel Light commemorates the landing.
