Ngarrindjeri raft with people cooking, a fire and a windbreak.

Ngarrindjeri is an Aboriginal nation of 18 language groups who occupied, and still inhabit, the Lower Murray, Coorong and Lakes area of South Australia. Their lands and waters extended 30km up the Murray from Lake Alexandrina, the length of the Coorong and the coastal area to Encounter Bay.  Today this Aboriginal group is still very strong, with a large community of people based in the Lower Murray and Coorong area.

Alexander Charles Kelly was born at Leith, Scotland in 1811. He was awarded a medical degree by Edinburgh University in 1832. Kelly acted as a surgeon on the East India Company's ships in 1833. He emigrated to South Australia aboard the Baboo in 1840 and began a medical practice at Port Adelaide. A year later, he was appointed assistant surgeon at Adelaide Hospital.

Mary Thomas, daughter of early pioneers and printing press operators, Robert and Mary Thomas, often referred 'kindly' to Aboriginal people, in her diary (PRG 1160/6, p. 46). Please note, the language used to describe Aboriginal people is innappropriate today;

May 25, 1846.      The queen's birthday was kept today. My two sisters and I accompanied Mrs. Holmes and her small daughter to North Terrace to see the blacks dine, but were somewhat disappointed by finding that, instead of sitting down at a long table to a dinner provided and cooked for them, as in the times of Governor Gawler, they had some food distributed to them separately. The Governor and a few military officers were assembled without the Government ground enclosure to meet the natives, of whom, as we were rather late arrivals, we did not see many. I was pleased to observe that some of the blacks were dressed in new blankets, a gift of the whites, but still I think that they ought to have been treated with greater liberality and if I had my will they should have been regaled with roast beef and plum pudding.

Aboriginal Australians, Dwellings, Murray River (N.S.W -S. Aust.)

Murray River (S. Aust)

Narrinyeri (Australian people)

Kelly, Alex C., 1811-1877

Jenkin, Graham,Conquest of the Ngarrindjeri, Point McLeay, Raukkan Publishers, 1995, 2^nd ed

Woolmer, George,Traditional Ngarinyeri people: Aboriginal people of the Murray Mouth Region,Adelaide, Education Department of South Australia, 1986