The Coorong - Culture and History

In fact the essence of the area is beautifully caught by Thiele in his book 'Coorong' when he writes: 'The Coorong is wilderness. For that reason it is of inestimable value to South Australia and the whole of humanity.

'It is an elemental region, a place of wind and water and vast skies, of sandhill and tussock, lagoon and waterweed, stone and scrub. It is a place of softened contours, muted colours and sea haze - and of glaring saltpans so intense that our brows pucker and our eyes wince. A place of winter storms and summer sunglades, of shorelines soft with sand and sibilant reeds, and of limestone outcrops sharper than teeth. A place to sense the universal in the particular, the infinite in the infinitessimal, the verities of life in blowing seeds and grains of sand.'

Geologically The Coorong is a set of complex and ancient sand dunes. The oldest was probably formed about 120,000 years ago. Then there is another dune formation which is about 80,000 years old. Some of that dune still remains on Younghusband Peninsula. The modern day Coorong was formed between 6,000 and 20,000 years ago when the sea rose to form an island on top of the 80,000 year old dune. This produced a lagoon behind the present line of seaward dunes. At the time there were probably many access points from the sea to the lagoon but over time the wind and the sands filled these in creating this unique neck of land.

Historically there were five Aboriginal tribal groupings living on The Coorong. They are still known as the Ngarrindjeri people (they are the same people who fought over secret women's business at Goolwa. They made bark and reed canoes, lived on the fish and molluscs in the area, and built shelters against the cold Southern Ocean winds.

The Ngarrindjeri people were decimated by the arrival of Europeans. The combination of smallpox (which raged all the way up the Murray River) and massacres saw the numbers of Aborigines on The Coorong drop from an estimated 3200 in 1842 to a mere 511 by 1874.

The discovery of The Coorong by Europeans occurred by accident. None of the sea explorers - notably Matthew Flinders and Nicholas Baudin - located it. Neither did Charles Sturt, the first European to reach the mouth of the Murray River. It wasn't until 1837 that two men, Strangways and Hutchinson, discovered the narrow lake and the following year a Captain Gill, having been wrecked near the mouth of the Murray, rowed a dinghy up the Coorong.

By 1839 Charles Bonney had overlanded sheep along The Coorong and in 1840 a Lieutenant Pullen had surveyed the mouth of the Murray River.

By 1840 there was a ferry across the Murray at Wellington which offered access to the Coorong and by the mid-1840s there was a stock route and a mail run down the coast. In 1856 Sir Charles Todd surveyed a telegraph line from Adelaide to Melbourne which ran the length of The Coorong and that same year a Captain Cadell managed to take a steamer down as far as Salt Creek.

The area's commercial potential was always restricted. Over the last half of the 19th century sheep farmers moved into the area but they were hampered by rabbit plagues and the mysterious 'coast disease'. There was an attempt at salt mining and, in 1892, an oil well was drilled (unsuccessfully) near Salt Creek.

As early as 1914 sections of The Coorong were being set aside as a National Park. However it wasn't until 1966 that the official Coorong National Park was established. In 1968 an additional 6840 hectares were set apart as a game reserve.