Pioneers SA Learning Hub

The language used within articles reflect the attitudes of the time. Please note that the newspaper clippings contain names and images of deceased persons which some readers may find distressing.

Pre-White Contact

• There was no known contact between Europeans and Aboriginal people in what is known as South Australia before 1800.
• People lived in extended family groups.
• The women gathered fruits, vegetables and various sees and hunted small animals
• The men hunted larger game and gathered some foods as they hunted
• Time was spent around the campfire telling stories, making tools, nets and bowls, clothing and teaching the young children.
• Dancing and singing was a regular part of life
• The extended family would move within their country or land, visiting campsites from previous years
• The availability of seasonal foods, the weather or because of deaths determined when families moved
• Large groups would meet regularly with others belonging to the same or neighbouring language groups for ceremonies
• Sacred sites are respected and maintained by elders who have responsibility for them

Before British Settlement

1801 – 1803 – Flinders, an English man and Baudin, a French man explored the coast and met at Encounter Bay, near Victor Habour.

1805 – Sealers from Europe and America came hunting for seals and set up in Kangaroo Island. The European sealers physically took one of the ‘Kaurna’ girls to Kangaroo Island. Sealers and whalers visited lower Eyre and probably Yorke Peninsula at this time as well.

1820 – A second small pox epidemic kills Aboriginal people as far north as Mt Remarkable in the Southern Flinders Ranges (Nukana Country). Many of the old people and young people died.

1820s – A whaling station was set up near Victor Harbour, creating curiosity and caution amongst southern Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri

1830 – The explorer Charles Sturt travelled along the River Murray to the Murray Mouth.

1834 – The South Australia Act 1834 or Foundation Act 1834 also known as the South Australian Colonisation Act passed in the British Parliament provided for the settlement of a province or multiple provinces.

The Act maked provision for the 300,000 square miles to become the territory in which British settlers could begin the province of South Australia. The territory was described as ‘waste and unoccupied’.

The Letters Patent relating to the Act said that nothing could be done which would “affect the rights of any Aboriginal natives of the said Province to the the actual occupation or enjoyment in their own persons or in the persons of their descendants of any lands therein now actually occupied or enjoyed by such natives”

Learn more about the Letters Patent here:

South Australian Legislation: https://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/lists-and-index-to-sa-legislation/letters-patent

Documenting Democracy: https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-did-2.html

History Trust of South Australia: https://education.history.sa.gov.au/resource/the-letters-patent/

1834 to 1840

• Edward john Eyre explores near and through the Flinders Ranges. He hardly had any contact with Aboriginal people because they hid from his view. But they watched him and his men closely from where they hid.

1840

• The 500 or less Kaurna people are outnumbered by the 17,000 Europeans as well as the 200,000 sheep and 15,000 cattle in the settlement
• Most of the land around Adelaide has been taken up for farming. Traditional plant and animal foods are trampled
• Missionaries arrive from Germany to work with Aboriginal people
• Relationships between the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and the Europeans is mostly friendly with curiosity on both sides, but many Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri die from diseases such as colds, measles and whooping cough because they have no immunity and were now living in unhygenic comditions
• Several of the River Murray Aboriginal people move closed to Adelaide

1842:

• Yorke Peninsula has been explored by the newcomers.

1850

• European squatters moved into the Mid North around Mt Remarkable, Gladstone and Laura