CORANDERRK

2025 Donation Recipient

Acknowledgement

I acknowledge that the large majority of my work has been created on, and been inspired by, Aboriginal land - it’s flora and fauna.

I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and I pay my respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures; and to Elders past, present and emerging.

Sovereignty was never ceded.

Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

The devastation of European colonisation

In 1835 John Batman made a so-called “treaty” with eight Kulin Ngurungaetas (headmen) to ‘acquire’ the land around Port Phillip. It is possible that the Ngurungaetas considered the treaty as similar to a tanderrum ceremony; a diplomatic rite of reciprocity and exchange that would have resulted in a relationship of ongoing mutual obligation, while providing the colonisers temporary access to, but not ownership of Kulin country and resources.

Instead, the Aboriginal people of Victoria were decimated by colonisation. Thirty short years after Europeans arrived in Victoria, only 2,000 Aboriginal people remained. Victoria’s white population grew to 100,000 between 1836 and 1851 and grew at a phenomenal rate in the 1850s due to the gold rush. Traditional hunting grounds were destroyed by gold miners and the remaining land taken over by graziers and squatters. Ways of life that had been occurring for tens of thousands of years were destroyed and it became almost impossible to retain and continue traditions passed down from the Elders. Lives continued to be lost through massacres and introduced diseases such as smallpox and influenza, to which Aboriginal people had no immunity to.

CORANDERRK

Coranderrk is located on Wurundjeri land. Wandoon Estate Aboriginal Corporation (WEAC) are its custodians and managers. They are Wurundjeri, and their language is Woiwurrung. They are descended from Wonga and Barak.Together with their four neighbouring groups – Boon Wurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, Taungurung and Wathaurong – they are part of the Kulin Nation.

Coranderrk Aboriginal Station opened in 1863 and became home to Aboriginal people from across Victoria whose lands had been stolen from them.

Coranderrk’s history is complex, tragic, full of white corruption and greed…Yet still hopeful, beautiful and of vital recollection. It is an incredibly important example of why Indigenous people are so integral to, and inseparable from, Australia’s flourishing. Country is not country without it’s Indigenous people, and Coranderrk serves as a reminder of just how intrinsic one is to the other.

If you would like to read about the history of Coranderrk (and I highly recommend you do!), please click the button below.

Learn more

CORANDERRK today

Through its early vision to establish a self-sufficient and self-governing way of life and the later campaigns to retain what was built, Coranderrk demonstrates Aboriginal resistance to colonisation and the value of astute political activism, caring for country and developing lasting friendships and partnerships. Coranderrk was forced into failure by politicians and others in power, but the place, connections and respect for country survive.

Today, despite substantial reductions in size and a period of private ownership, Coranderrk retains this significance, not only as a physical and spiritual link to the past, but as continuing, living history.