Indigenous connection to Kangaroo Island
Karta Pintingga -Island of the Dead (Kangaroo Island) in Kaurna language
Kaurna Miyurna, Ngarrindjeri, Ramindjeri and Barngalla nunga were the first to settle on Karta Pintingga about 65,000 years ago when the Island was still attached to the Australian continent.
Sea levels began to rise about 10,000 years ago and it was nearly 2000-5000 years ago that the Island became completely isolated.
*Nunga means South Australian person or people in Nunga Kriol language
Image: © James Taylor 2022
Ngarrindjeri people tell a story about this happening:
Long ago, Ngurunderi’s (who was an ancestral being who shaped the lands, laws of living and creatures) two wives ran away from him, and he was forced to follow them.
As he searched for them, he traveled down a small stream in a bark canoe. A giant cod fish (Ponde) swam ahead of the Ngurunderi, widening the river with sweeps of its tail and forming the Murray River with its various bends.
At last, with the help of Nepele (the brother of Ngurunderi's wives), Ponde was speared after it had left the Murray River and had swum into Lake Alexandrina. Ngurunderi divided the fish with his stone knife and created a new species of fish from each piece.
Image: © Jacob Stengle 2015
Meanwhile, Ngurunderi's two wives had made camp. On their campfire they were cooking bony bream, a fish forbidden to the Ngarrindjeri women. Ngurunderi smelt the fish cooking and knew his wives were close. He pursued them across Lake Albert and along the beach to Cape Jervis. When he arrived there, he saw his wives wading half-way across the shallow channel which divided Naroongowie (Kangaroo Island, at that time) from the mainland. He was determined to punish his wives, and angrily ordered the water to rise up and drown them.
With a terrific rush the waters roared and the women were carried back towards the mainland. Although they tried frantically to swim against the tidal wave, they were powerless to do so and were drowned. They became the rocky Pages Islands (These rocks can still be seen in the strait of Backstairs Passage and were named ‘The Pages’ by Matthew Flinders).
Image: © Jacob Stengle
Ngurunderi then swam out to Naroongowie (Kangaroo Island), and as it was a hot day, for shade, he made a she-oak tree that was the largest in Australia. He tried to sleep under the tree but the wailing of his drowning wives kept him awake. Ngurunderi knew that it was time for him to travel to Waleruwar (the spirit world).
He walked to the western end of the island where he cast his spear into the sea. The rocky reef that resulted is still there. He threw away all his weapons and moved to his home in the Milky Way, where the people who follow the laws he gave them will join him when they die. It is said that anyone who sleeps under a she-oak tree will hear the wailing that kept Ngurunderi awake.
Image: © Jacob Stengle
After this Naroongowie (Kangaroo Island) was referred to as Karta Pintingga - Island of the Dead.
In Kaurna Miyurna, Ngarrindjeri, Ramindjeri and Barngalla dreaming, their ancestors and descendants follow Ngurunderi to path to Karta Pintingga to enter Waleruwar, and the island is therefore a sacred site.
Image: Ngurunderi Looking for His Wives © Jacob Stengle
European Influence
Image: © N. Draper "Kartan” stone artefacts from Kangaroo Island
Shell middens and stone tools definitely show Aboriginal people living on Kangaroo Island as long as 16,000 years ago and they may have only disappeared from the island as a remnant small group as recently as 2,000 years ago. Early European explorers believed the island to be uninhabited but hammer stones were found at Hawk’s Nest near Murray's Lagoon in 1903 followed in the 1930s by Aboriginal campsites around the island, including one near the fur seal colony of Cape du Couedic. These had grown to 120 sites by 1958.
Image: Intruders © Jacob Stengle 1997 This painting is about a historical incident that is still very painful to the Ngarrindjeri people today. It is about the conflict between the sealers living on Kangaroo Island and the Ngarrindjeri people of the Coorong during the 1800s. The sealer stole Ngarrinderi women and young girls and imprisoned them on Kangaroo Island.
The Island’s English name was given by Matthew Flinders during his 1803 mapping for the British land claim of Australia. He named it ‘Kangaroo Island’ after the tame kangaroos slaughtered to feed the crew of his exploration ship, The Investigator. Karta Pintingga became an outpost for American and then European whalers and sealers to base themselves for commercial hunting purposes. Indigenous women from the mainland and Tasmania were kidnapped and taken there as sexual and domestic slaves.
A story from this time tells of three Ngarrindjeri women and a baby who tried to escape by crossing the strait that separated them from the mainland. Two of the women crossed in a small row boat, but there was not enough room for the third woman and her baby. In her desperation to survive, she was forced to tie her baby to her back and swim the 14km across the strait, but they perished at sea before reaching the mainland.
In 1836, the British officially colonised Karta Pintingga and established the town of Kingscote. The British choose to colonise the Island before the mainland of South Australia because they would not be met with attacks from Nunga people. As a result, Kingscote became a key vantage point for the British colonisation of South Australia.
