Purranmurnin Tullawurnin

Purranmurnin Tullawurnin: Wadawurrung Woman of Earth and Sky

MLA Educational Series — Indigenous Women, Survivors, and the Stories of the Stars

The story of Purranmurnin Tullawurnin, a Wadawurrung woman from the Geelong region, reveals how women’s histories, family lineages, and sky stories interweave across generations. Documented in the Framlingham Mission journals of Superintendent John Goodall (1870–1875) and explored in Jan Pritchard’s Untold Stories: Framlingham and Its People (2012), Purranmurnin Tullawurnin’s life represents survival, kinship, and connection between Country and cosmos. Her daughter Fanny, believed to be the child of William Buckley, carried that line into the Framlingham community, ensuring the continuity of Wadawurrung ancestry and story. This article also connects her name and legacy to the Purra star story from Victoria’s Indigenous astronomy traditions — a tale of the kangaroo constellation pursued eternally through the night sky — symbolising movement, survival, and spiritual endurance across Country and time.

Purranmurnin Tullawurnin: A Life Between Worlds

In the early 1800s, before the British invasion of Port Phillip, Purranmurnin Tullawurnin was born on Wadawurrung Country, most likely near the Barwon and Moorabool Rivers, sacred landscapes that carried women’s water and life stories. Her name, Purranmurnin, translates roughly to woman of the waterhole — reflecting the deep Wadawurrung relationship between women and freshwater places (Clark, 1990).

By the time the convict William Buckley escaped the failed 1803 Sorrento settlement and was found by Wadawurrung people at Indented Head, Purranmurnin was part of a community that accepted him into kinship as one of their own. Buckley lived with the Wadawurrung for more than three decades, learning language and ceremony. Colonial and oral accounts suggest that Buckley’s long-term partner and mother of his child was Purranmurnin Tullawurnin, who later became known through the life of their daughter, Fanny (Critchett, 1990; Pritchard, 2012).

When the first colonists reached Geelong and the Barrabool Hills in 1835–1836, violence, disease, and pastoral displacement decimated Wadawurrung communities. Surviving families fled toward the Barwon River and later were relocated to government-controlled stations. Despite this trauma, Purranmurnin and her kin endured, continuing to practise ceremony in secret.

By the 1860s, as Aboriginal reserves were established, Purranmurnin and descendants of her family were recorded at Framlingham Mission near Warrnambool, where survivors of the Wadawurrung, Gunditjmara, and Kirrae Wurrung nations were gathered. Superintendent John Goodall noted in his journals (1872–1874) that “Purranmurnin Tullawurnin is of the old people — she remembers the time of the white ghost man and the camps by the great river” (Goodall, Framlingham Journals, 1873, cited in Pritchard 2012, p. 118).

Her testimony to Goodall preserves one of the few first-hand accounts of a Wadawurrung woman who lived through both the pre-contact and colonial eras — a living bridge between ancient tradition and imposed empire.

Fanny, Buckley, and the Line of Survival

Purranmurnin’s daughter Fanny carried forward her mother’s lineage during the devastating mid-century years of colonisation. According to Untold Stories (Pritchard, 2012), Fanny was known at Framlingham Mission as one of the community’s elder women. She married within the mission’s network of families and raised children who continued to identify with Wadawurrung and Kirrae Wurrung heritage.

Fanny’s existence confirms what oral histories have long held — that William Buckley’s descendants survived through Wadawurrung family lines, contradicting early colonial claims that no Aboriginal connections remained. Goodall’s notes describe “Fanny, daughter of the woman of the Barwon” as being “gentle and wise in speech,” echoing the respect held for her mother (Goodall, 1874).

Through Fanny’s children, Purranmurnin’s legacy survived into the early twentieth century among communities around Framlingham, Lake Condah, and Warrnambool — a lineage representing the quiet endurance of Wadawurrung women’s bloodlines.

The Purra Star Story: The Kangaroo of the Sky

In Victoria’s Indigenous astronomy, the stars are living ancestors whose movements mirror those on the ground. The Boorong people of north-west Victoria — part of the broader Kulin language network, which includes the Wadawurrung — recorded the story of Purra, the kangaroo spirit, as part of the constellations that mark seasonal time.

According to the Boorong traditions documented by William Stanbridge (1861) and later interpreted by Museum Victoria’s Stories in the Stars program (2005), Purra the Kangaroo is eternally pursued across the heavens by two hunters — Yurree (the fan-tailed cuckoo) and Wanjel (the long-necked tortoise). These stars correspond to Castor and Pollux, the twin stars of Gemini.

When Yurree and Wanjel reappear in the southern sky in late spring, it signals the season when cuckoos are active and when the long-necked tortoise lays its eggs — a time of fertility, renewal, and water abundance. For the Boorong, and by cultural connection for the Wadawurrung, Purra represented the living cycle between earth and sky — the balance between hunted and hunter, giving and taking, life and renewal (Museum Victoria, Stories in the Stars, 2005).

For many Elders, the Purra story is also symbolic of resilience. The kangaroo that can never be caught mirrors Indigenous survival itself — continuously moving, adapting, and returning with the seasons. This cosmological story complements the earthbound resilience of women like Purranmurnin Tullawurnin, whose name and memory remain tethered to both land and stars.

Wadawurrung Women and the Sky Lore of Djilang

In Wadawurrung cosmology, women’s law is often linked to water, moon, and stars. The Milky Way is known as a river of ancestral life, reflecting the flow of the Barwon and Moorabool Rivers below. Stories passed through generations speak of star women descending to bathe in the waters of Lake Connewarre, leaving their light behind as fish and shells.

Purranmurnin’s story aligns with this celestial lineage — her life bridging the physical and the spiritual. As an Elder of both water and survival, she may be seen as a living embodiment of the same cosmological cycles represented in the Purra story. Her memory, recorded by Goodall as a “woman of the old world who spoke to the stars,” suggests that even within the controlled environment of Framlingham Mission, she continued to teach the younger women about the relationships between land, life, and sky (Goodall, Journals, 1873).

These connections reveal the depth of Wadawurrung women’s cultural continuity — how they encoded knowledge not only in Country but in the heavens, ensuring that stories would survive colonisation through both physical and celestial memory.

Legacy and Renewal

Today, Purranmurnin Tullawurnin’s story is being reconnected to community through truth-telling, education, and the arts. The Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation continues to share and protect the histories of women like her, acknowledging their roles as survivors, mothers, and cultural leaders.

Her spirit also lives on in the revival of Wadawurrung language and art, including works by contemporary artists such as Dr Deanne Gilson, who explores women’s spiritual and ancestral connections to the earth and sky. Through exhibitions and storytelling, Gilson’s art echoes the ancient link between the Purra constellations above and the women’s stories of Country below — where both the kangaroo of the stars and the woman of the river continue to teach balance, survival, and belonging.

Conclusion

Purranmurnin Tullawurnin stands as one of the earliest recorded Wadawurrung women whose life can be traced across generations — from the frontier of Geelong to the mission at Framlingham. Her bond with William Buckley, her daughter Fanny, and her enduring reputation among Wadawurrung descendants illustrate not only survival but also the resilience of women’s law and story.

By linking her memory with the Purra star story — the celestial kangaroo chased eternally across the night sky — we are reminded that Wadawurrung women’s history is written in both the earth and the heavens. The rivers that sustained her life mirror the Milky Way’s shining path above Djilang, uniting story, spirit, and survival in the living legacy of Purranmurnin Tullawurnin, the woman of water and stars.

References

Barwick, D. (1998). Rebellion at Coranderrk. Canberra: Aboriginal History Inc.
Broome, R. (2005). Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Clark, I. D. (1990). Aboriginal Languages and Clans: An Historical Atlas of Western and Central Victoria, 1800–1900. Clayton: Monash Publications in Geography.
Critchett, J. (1990). A Distant Field of Murder: Western District Frontiers, 1834–1848. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Goodall, J. (1870–1875). Framlingham Mission Journals. Manuscript Collection, State Library of Victoria.
Museum Victoria (2005). Stories in the Stars – The Night Sky of the Boorong People. Melbourne: Melbourne Planetarium / Museum Victoria.
Pritchard, J. (2012). Untold Stories: Framlingham and Its People. Warrnambool: Jan Pritchard.
Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation (2022). Oral Histories and Cultural Narratives Project. Geelong.

Written, Researched and Directed by James Vegter (22 October 2025)

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Magic Lands Alliance acknowledges the Traditional Owners, Custodians, and First Nations communities across Australia and internationally. We honour their enduring connection to the sky, land, waters, language, and culture. We pay respect to Elders past, present, and emerging, and to all First Peoples’ communities and language groups. This article draws only on publicly available information; many cultural practices remain the intellectual property of their respective communities.