Walkway Dedicated To Early Pioneers Who Settled Hahndorf

First Sign:     Their Predecessors - The Peramangk People

Those remarkable fifty-four Prussian Lutheran refugee families who established the village of Hahndorf early in 1839 were not the first people to think of this area as home.  Not by any means!  For something over two millenia, an Aboriginal tribe named the Peramangk had roamed through the Adelaide Hills, roughly from modern-day Truro in the north to Myponga in the south.

According to legend, Aboriginal people of the Adelaide Plains believed that the Peramangk were the descendants of a part-human part-kangaroo husband, Pootpobberrie, and his wife, who decided to make the Adelaide Hills their permanent living quarters.  Constantly on the move, this couple and their descendants learnt to survive in a climate often freezing in winter and rather warm in summer.

Short, though violent, spring and summer thunderstorms followed sustained winter deluges of rain.  From time to time, lightning strikes burnt out huge tree trunks and swept through rank, tinder-dry vegetation.  The Peramangk used the hollow gums for shelter and hunted down wild creatures fleeing into the open to escape advancing flames.  All living things alike recognised the danger of remaining anywhere near watercourses about to burst into wild, uncontrolled flooding, which subsided as fast as it had begun.

On his inland journey during January 1839 to settle on the site of Hahndorf, Captain Hahn witnessed another kind of fire, whereby the Peramangk rubbed two long thin sticks together so skillfully between their hands that the stick is burning briskly within two minutes at the most.  The men of the tribe formed a huge circle many kilometres in diameter, and after lighting many small fires in the straw dry grass around the circumference, directed the resulting flames in towards the centre of the circle.

Hahn continued:  The long dry grass, bushes and young trees burn fiercely; all the animals living in this area flee toward the centre, where the savages then catch them … I had never before seen such a fire  …  and the fire burnt for some days.

These dramatic conflagrations began at night during new moon, raced from hill to hill at amazing speed, and filled the surrounding countryside with thick billowing smoke, which newly arriving white settlers could see from far out to sea.  William Finlayson, a young Church of Christ pastor landing in February 1837, remarked:  In the morning, a great change had taken place; the whole range was as black as midnight, except where the trees were burning.

Filled with curiosity, the good minister joined an small exploration party through the hills during the 1837 Christmas holiday season.  Sure enough, one of these dramatic burnings was under way at the same time:  Some in Adelaide thought we would never return, but be murdered by the natives, but, strange to say …  we never saw one  … Smoke in the distance we frequently saw, and came upon their recently occupied camping places, but themselves we saw not, but I have no doubt they saw and avoided us.

Yes, the Peramangk people would have certainly been on watch! Today, rock lookout shelters still stand sentinal over the Adelaide Plains and the Murray Flats.  The feared Peramangk were always on alert for Kaurna and Murray River Aborigines about to enter the ranges, via one of the numerous river valleys.  These lookouts also served as bases from which to send smoke signals to other tribal groups and to spot game which hunters could later seek out to vary the diet of hills dwellers.

Visiting Aboriginal people settled down in well-defined transit campsites from where they hoped to bargain for canoe bark, possum skins and quartz.  In return, the visitors brought up various coloured ochres from localised deposits in the foothills, as well as flint from Murray-side cliffs, and deft, light spears made of mallee wood, in hopes of sealing numerous deals.

The site of present-day Hahndorf was unsuited for the Peramangk people to use year-round.  During winter, chill winds often howled relentlessly through this open, park-like countryside.  Such exposed territory was also regularly prone to sudden uncontrolled floods from a series of water-courses which eventually joined in several places near what is now the main street and then emptied out as a single volume of water into the Onkaparinga River several kilometres further west.

Wisely, the Peramangk made winter camp near the headwaters of the many streams and rivers higher up in the ranges.  These people lived snugly in homes constructed of branches and bark, grass and leaves deftly intertwined around hollow-sided red gums.  Such huge trees and thick stands of smaller wattles provided a bounteous natural habitat for a native moth grub, whose balls of cream flesh caterpillars tightly hidden among piles of damp, decayed wood was an especially delicious edible delicacy for the Peramangk.

Massing over the ranges, huge balls of wattle blooms heralded the coming of milder weather.  In anticipation, Aboriginal gatherers were watchful for insect larvae, birds’ eggs, young birds and lizards which emerged as a result.  As spring advanced, the Peramangk were coaxed into enjoying an outdoor existence in wurlies constructed of huge sheets of bark.  For members of the Mount Barker Springs group, the pre-European site of Hahndorf was perfect.  Those huge gums dotted irregularly over the valley provided limitless sources of building materials for summer residences.

While women and children generally stayed near the wurlies, to act as gatherers for berries, grubs and small game, the men formed hunting parties.  Small sticks burnt holes in the bark of bare lower tree trunks to allow hunters working in pairs to climb up to raid the upper branches for possums, valuable for both skin and meat.  Using only a slender spear and short club, Peramangk hunters in groups pitted their wits against kangaroos, wallabies, possums and emus – either driving them into huge nets made from woven bulrushes, or spearing and clubbing unsuspecting creatures intent upon an evening drink at one of the area’s convenient waterholes.  The water itself also yielded yabbies, perch, mud fish and water rats.

Hahndorf’s two large permanent waterholes, which the Peramangk called Bukartillas or swimming places, likewise proved ideal for collecting the above live food sources lurking in the cold, inky depths.  Besides being places to swim, the Bukartillas also served as convenient venues for whole tribal daily ablutions and occasional initiation rites as children moved towards adulthood.  Regular flooding kept these pools clean and clear for most of the year.

Following the excitement of a gathering and hunt, with the aid of the inevitable campfire, Peramangk women cooked welcome food, while their menfolk used the heat to fashion certain weapons.  At night, the low fire embers provided light and warmth.  On still, moonlit evenings, the Aboriginal people loved to relax nearby while skilled dancers performed traditional corroborees to keep alive in dramatic fashion the folk memory of their culture for younger generations to absorb.

Captain Hahn also observed how the Peramangk instructed their children in the use of weapons:  They had set up a round wooden disc as big as a plate, at which they then took aim.  Each child was lined up with his spear, then one of the old men placed himself at a distance of about twenty paces from them and rolled the disc along diagonally in front of the children.  I saw them hit the disc several times when it was moving at its fastest.

Hahn believed that the Peramangk women appeared more advanced than the men in using a great variety of life skills:  I saw a jacket there, made entirely of small opossum skins  …  beautifully sewn  …  A thread had been made from the gut of a kangaroo.  A small bone, pointed at one end, served as the needle  …

Their children are soon able to fend for themselves.  I was amazed at the little black people, who could scarcely have been a year old to judge by their size, already running about among the old ones and playing games as children do  …  I ascribe it to their natural hardiness, as their body build is only slight.

A man whose word can be trusted told me that he had found a woman lying in childbirth under a tree in the morning  …  and that in the afternoon he had seen the same woman walking around five miles away with her child on her back.

However, Dirk Hahn was not overly impressed with the physical appearance of the Peramangk:  Their hair is stiff and so long that it hangs down to their shoulders.  They have a liking for smearing fat into their hair and dyeing it red  …  Their facial features are without exception very ugly.  The upper part of the body is thick and clumsy, but they have quite thin loins and legs.

For reasons not yet fully understood, by the time the Old Lutherans arrived to establish Hahndorf in early 1839, the Peramangk people had already begun to vacate much of their original territory.  Prosaically, they were probably suffering from the ravages of smallpox transmitted from European adventurers moving down the Murray River a decade or more earlier.

After encountering the more recent arrivals, the Peramangk people near Hahndorf learnt some words of broken English and no doubt German, and more and more relied upon the incoming Europeans for food and other handouts.  Hovering in an increasingly half-real world, the Peramangk simply melted away in the wake of the newcomers, whom they often regarded as ghostly re-incarnations of their own ancestors.