[3] When Governor George Grey led an expedition of surveyors, overland from Adelaide to Mt Gambier during April–May 1844, the diarist and painter George French Angas who accompanied them, noted that they found, from Woakwine Range onwards, numerous native tracks, and old encampments with abandoned wurleys, and heaps of banksia cones, which were used to make sweet drinks, mud weirs in swamps to catch fish, wicker-work traps to snare birds, and raised platform structures for spotting emus and kangaroos to hunt.
Settlement occurred rapidly over the following two decades with significant frontier conflict taking place involving theft of sheep, spearings, massacres and mass poisoning of the natives.
[1] There are a number of reports of poisoned flour or damper being given or left for natives in the settlement of Victoria and South Australia at the time.
[6] According to the accounts given by Pendowen, Neenimin and Barakbouranu, and narrated to Christina Smith: In 1843 Henry Arthur joined his brother Charles in establishing a sheep run at Mount Schank.
At least 9 indigenous Bungandidj Wattatonga clan people were allegedly murdered by the station owner James Brown who was subsequently charged with the crime.
[12] Christina Smith's source from the Wattatonga tribe refers to 11 people killed in this incident by two white men.
[13] A report by Mr Smith to Dr Moorhouse, the Protector of Aborigines, in April 1851 reveals that "the natives belonging to the Rivoli Bay Tribe (Buandig) are all quiet, and most of them usefully employed in one way or another by the settlers."
The Leake Brothers of Glencoe Station built what they called their 'Frontier House' in 1854 which is described as a 'large homestead with slits in the walls through which rifles could be used against any likely intruder,' according to local historian Les Hill.
[15] Gradually a certain accommodation was made with Buandig people working as station hands, shearers and domestic servants while remaining on their own land.
[2] The names include: According to Christina Smith in her 1880 book on the Bungandidj – The Boandik Tribe of South Australian Aborigines: A Sketch of Their Habits, Customs, Legends, and Language - The largest clan, according to Smith, was the Bungandidj who occupied country from the mouth of the Glenelg River to Rivoli Bay North (Beachport), extending inland for about 30 miles (48 km).
Some controversy exists as to which tribe, the Bungandidj or Meintangk, occupied the stretch of land between Rivoli Bay and Cape Jaffa, and in particular which of the two was in possession of the Woakwine Range.
[28] Related vocabulary in Bungandidj includes: drual (man); barite (girl); moorongal (boy); and ngat (mother).