Aboriginal occupation
The Bunurong people of the Kulin nation are the original holders of the resource-rich coastlands along the eastern part of Port Phillip bay, from present-day Werribee to Point Nepean, and further east to Wilsons Prom.
During the last great Ice Age, so much water was locked away, frozen at the poles, that sea levels dropped and the bay became a dry, grassy plain. Bunurong oral histories tell of the reflooding when seawater returned 6,000-10,000 years ago.
European settlers claimed Naam/Melbourne in 1835 and rapidly displaced the Indigenous population. In 1852 a reserve was established for Bunurong people along Mordialloc Creek and rations and blankets were distributed in what is now Attenborough Park, north of the Nepean Highway. Further demands by settlers, principally fishermen, led the government to revoke the reserve in 1862 and by the late 1860s most of the local Bunurong had relocated to Coranderk, near Healsville.
Jimmy Dunbar, the last occupant of the reserve, died in 1877.
Today, signs of aboriginal occupation include hand-dug wells in the Beaumaris cliffs, kitchen middens on the shore and a canoe scar-tree beside the creek.
The name Mordialloc is derived from two Bunurong words, Murdi or Moordi meaning flat or lying flat, and Yallock, meaning creek or stream. Mordialloc likely refers to flat or swampy water.
