Djadjawurrung

[6] According to Norman Tindale and Ian D. Clark, Their lands once extended over 16,000 square kilometres (6,200 sq mi), embracing the Upper Loddon and Avoca rivers, running east, through Maldon and Bendigo to around Castlemaine and west as far as St. Arnaud.

The northern reaches touch Boort and, northwest, Donald, while Creswick, Daylesford and Woodend marks its southern frontier, and to the southwest, Navarre Hill and Mount Avoca.

The Tachylite deposits near Spring Hill and the Coliban River may have been important trade goods as stone artefacts from this material have been found around Victoria.

The settlement of the Goulburn and Loddon Districts began the following year by squatters eager to carve out a station and run.

[11] As to the epidemics, they 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.

[12] Munangabum was an influential clan head of the Liarga balug and spiritual Leader or neyerneyemeet of the Djadja wurrung who lived through two smallpox epidemics and shaped his people's response to European settlement in the 1830s and 1840s.

On 7 February 1841, Munangabum was shot and wounded by settlers while his companion Gondiurmin died at Far Creek Station, west of Maryborough.

[14] The European settlement of Western Victoria in the 1830s and 1840s was marked by resistance to the invasion, often by the driving off of sheep, which then resulted in conflict and sometimes a massacre of aboriginal people.

It is universally and distinctly understood that the chances are very small indeed of a person taking up a new run being able to maintain possession of his place and property without having recourse to such means – sometimes by wholesale...[15]Table: reported killings in Dja Dja Wurrung territory to 1859[16] An important source of frontier conflict was sexual relations between European settlers and aboriginal women.

Historian Bain Attwood claims that aboriginal clans may have sought to incorporate whites into their kinship society through sexual relations with its principles and obligations of reciprocity and sharing; however, this would have been misconstrued by the settlers as prostitution, resulting in cultural misunderstanding and conflict.

[18] Edward Parker commented: Were the settlers generally to follow the example of Mr Hepburn, much of the liberal intercourse between the labouring men and native women, and consequently the endangering of property, would be suppressed.

[18]Parker expressed in 1842 the "firm conviction... that nine out of ten outrages committed by the blacks" derived either directly or indirectly from sexual relations.

While he considered the "labouring classes" the worst offenders, he also indicated there were "individuals claiming the rank of gentleman and even aspiring to be administrators of the law" who abused Aboriginal women.

The Protector's duties included to safeguard aborigines from "encroachments on their property, and from acts of cruelty, of oppression or injustice" and a longer term goal of "civilising" the natives.

Parker suggested to Robinson and to Governor Gipps that protectorate stations be established within each district to concentrate aboriginals in one area and provide for their needs and so reduce frontier conflict.

From the late 1830s European contact introduced consumption, venereal disease, the common cold, bronchitis, influenza, chicken pox, measles and scarlet fever.

[27] An investigation into the conditions at Franklinford in February 1864 by Coranderrk superintendent John Green and Guardian of the Aborigines William Thomas found the protectorate school unfit for instruction and that the farms had all been abandoned.

Green recommended closure of the school and removal of the children to Coranderrk, with Thomas agreeing to the move but opposing the breaking up of the Protectorate Station.

Caleb and Anna Morgan, descendants of Caroline Malcolm who resettled at Coranderrk, were active members of the Australian Aborigines League founded by William Cooper in 1933–34.

Rankin asked the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment to produce documents proving that the Crown has the right to occupy these lands.

[29] Communities consisted of 16 land-owning groups called clans that spoke a related language and were connected through cultural and mutual interests, totems, trading initiatives and marriage ties.

The agreement area extends from north of the Great Dividing Range near Daylesford and includes part or all of the catchments of the Richardson, Avon, Avoca, Loddon and Campaspe Rivers.