Wadawurrung Place Names
The History of the Barwon River: Culture, Country, and Colonisation
The Barwon River is one of Victoria’s great waterways, flowing from the Otway Ranges through Geelong to Lake Connewarre and the sea. Known as Parwan or Barwon in Wadawurrung language, it has sustained people, plants, and animals for tens of thousands of years. For the Wadawurrung, the river was law, food, story, and ceremony. For Europeans after 1836, it became both a frontier of conflict and a resource for colonial settlement.
The river’s history is layered: a deep Aboriginal story stretching back over millennia, a violent colonial story of dispossession, and a contemporary story of renewal.
The Barwon in Wadawurrung Culture
River of Life
For the Wadawurrung, the Barwon was inseparable from daily survival and spiritual law.
Food systems: The river provided abundant fish, mussels, yabbies, and especially eels (kooyang). Eel harvesting at Lake Connewarre was central to seasonal life, with traps and woven nets used to catch migrating fish (Broome 2005).
Plants and fibres: Reeds and rushes were harvested to make baskets, nets, and mats, embedding ecological knowledge in craft.
Ceremony and story: River bends, waterfalls, and confluences were storied places tied to ancestral beings.
Astronomy and the River
The Wadawurrung connection to sky and water is demonstrated at Wurdi Youang, a stone arrangement west of the Barwon near Little River. The site aligns with solstice and equinox sunsets, suggesting it functioned as an ancient observatory (Norris et al. 2013). This highlights how the river and sky were integrated into one knowledge system: celestial signs told when eels migrated, when plants flowered, and when ceremony should occur.
Tanderrum and Kinship
The Barwon was also a gathering ground. Tanderrum ceremonies—rituals of welcome—took place along its banks, particularly near Geelong. These ceremonies granted visiting groups temporary rights to food and water, showing the Wadawurrung’s diplomatic governance. Such gatherings reinforced kinship ties with neighbouring Kulin nations.
William Buckley and the Barwon
The Barwon is inseparable from the story of William Buckley, the escaped convict who lived with the Wadawurrung for 32 years (1803–1835). Buckley camped and travelled extensively along the Barwon and at Lake Connewarre, adopting Wadawurrung language and culture. His memoirs, though shaped by colonial editors, describe fishing, eel harvesting, and ritual life on the river.
For the Wadawurrung, Buckley’s survival underscores the richness of their knowledge: an outsider could not have lived without the generosity and teaching of the river’s custodians.
Colonisation and Conflict
Squatters Arrive
From 1836, squatters rapidly claimed Wadawurrung land along the Barwon under the new squatter licensing system (Reynolds 1987). Runs were established around Geelong, the Moorabool, and Barrabool Hills, enclosing sacred sites and waterholes.
Resistance and Massacres
Wadawurrung resistance included spearing livestock, reclaiming food, and burning huts. Settlers, emboldened by squatter licenses, retaliated with violence.
Bellarine Peninsula: Several killings of Wadawurrung people by settlers were recorded in the late 1830s (Clark 1995).
Moorabool and Barwon valleys: Frontier violence escalated, with Wadawurrung clans decimated in conflicts often described in settler records as “dispersals.”
Though official documents were evasive, oral histories affirm massacres along the river, part of the wider frontier wars across Victoria (Critchett 1990).
Dispossession and Dependency
By the 1840s, most Wadawurrung families had been displaced:
Many were forced into Protectorate depots such as Nerre Nerre Warren.
Survivors near Geelong lived in camps along the river, dependent on rations, their autonomy undermined.
Environmental Transformation
Dammed and Diverted
Colonists quickly exploited the Barwon’s flow. Buckley Falls was dammed for water supply and mills, altering fish migration and destroying eel habitats.
Wetland Draining
The wetlands of Lake Connewarre were progressively drained for agriculture, destroying one of Victoria’s richest food and cultural landscapes.
Grazing and Clearing
Sheep and cattle trampled riverbanks, destroying yam daisy fields and disrupting fire-stick farming that had maintained grasslands for millennia (Gammage 2011).
For Wadawurrung people, this environmental devastation was inseparable from cultural loss: ceremonies tied to eel and plant cycles could no longer be practised in their proper form.
The Barwon and Geelong’s Growth
By the mid-19th century, the Barwon was reimagined as the backbone of Geelong’s development.
Industry: Woollen mills, tanneries, and abattoirs were established on its banks.
Water supply: Pipelines carried Barwon water to a growing colonial town.
Recreation: Rowing regattas, fishing clubs, and river walks turned the Barwon into a settler civic landscape.
Yet this civic pride concealed the river’s violent colonial past and its deeper Aboriginal significance.
Contemporary Renewal
Cultural Revitalisation
Today, the Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation leads projects to restore knowledge of the Barwon. This includes:
Mapping cultural sites along the river.
Reviving eel-harvesting practices at Lake Connewarre.
Holding smoking ceremonies and cultural education events on Country.
Environmental Programs
Partnerships with Parks Victoria, DEECA, and local councils are restoring wetlands, replanting native vegetation, and improving water quality. These efforts increasingly incorporate Aboriginal fire and water management practices.
Truth-Telling
The Yoorrook Justice Commission has heard Wadawurrung testimony about massacres and dispossession along the Barwon. Such processes are critical for acknowledging the river’s contested history.
Conclusion
The Barwon River embodies Victoria’s deep history: tens of thousands of years of Wadawurrung custodianship, disrupted by less than two centuries of colonisation. It was a river of food, ceremony, and story; a site of frontier violence and dispossession; and later, a foundation for Geelong’s prosperity.
Today, the Barwon is being re-understood not only as an ecological asset but as a cultural one. Restoring its wetlands and honouring its Wadawurrung stories is part of a broader movement of healing Country and telling truth. To walk along the Barwon is to encounter not just water and trees but a living archive of resilience, survival, and renewal.
References
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. Melbourne: Monash University Press.
Clark, I.D. (1995). Scars in the Landscape: A Register of Massacre Sites in Western Victoria 1803–1859. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Critchett, J. (1990). A Distant Field of Murder: Western District Frontiers, 1834–1848. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Gammage, B. (2011). The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Norris, R., Hamacher, D. & Abrahams, R. (2013). ‘Wurdi Youang: An Australian Aboriginal Stone Arrangement with Possible Solar Indications’, Rock Art Research, 30(1), pp. 55–65.
Presland, G. (1994). Aboriginal Melbourne: The Lost Land of the Kulin People. Melbourne: Harriland Press.
Reynolds, H. (1987). The Law of the Land. Ringwood: Penguin.
Wadawurrung Traditional Owners Aboriginal Corporation (2020). Barwon River Cultural Values Report. Geelong: Wadawurrung TOAC.
Written, Researched and Directed by James Vegter (22 October 2025)
MLA
Sharing the truth of Indigenous and colonial history through film, education, land, and community.
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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.