Nurlungka

Abstract

The name first recorded as ‘Noolunga’ (later re-spelled in other ways, such as ‘Noarlunga’ which became standard) was derived from the Kaurna word nurlungga (KWP New Spelling nurlungka). We infer that the first surveyors of the district in 1839 heard it from their Aboriginal guides applying it to the ‘horseshoe’ loop of the Onkaparinga River on Sections 70 and 71 at what is now Old Noarlunga. The word means ‘at the corner or bend [of a river]'. However, it was not a place-name, probably not even a generic one, but merely a description of the place. This alleged place-name does not occur at all in the Aboriginal vocabularies of the Protectors. The site was known to Kaurna-speaking Aboriginal people, and to the German missionary linguists (apart from one early misconception in 1840), only as Ngangkiparingga, ‘woman’s river place’ (see PNS 4.02/04). Its essential public features were not the ‘bend’ but the ford, which controlled movement northward and southward on the plains; and its true name referred not to a ‘bend’ but to stories or business about women.]’.