The Mooro are a
Nyungar Aboriginal clan, a subgroup of the
Whadjuk. Their territory stretches from the
Swan River in
Perth
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...
north to the
Moore River beyond the northern limits of metropolitan Perth and east to
Ellen Brook. Evidence of
Aboriginal occupation of the
Swan Coastal Plain
The Swan Coastal Plain in Western Australia is the geographic feature which contains the Swan River as it travels west to the Indian Ocean. The coastal plain continues well beyond the boundaries of the Swan River and its tributaries, as a geo ...
extends back more than 40,000 years.
Prior to colonisation and during first contact, the Mooro clan traversed the lakes and wetlands running parallel to the coast, including
Yanchep,
Neerabup Lake,
Lake Joondalup, and as far south as
Lake Monger. The region was a key food and water source, where wild fowl, fish, frogs, freshwater
tortoise
Tortoises () are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin: ''tortoise''). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like oth ...
s and a range of
marsupial
Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in ...
s could be captured. The coastal region to the west yielded
chert
Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a ...
and limestone suitable for making stone tools. They moved with the seasons, seeking higher ground further east in winter, then returning in late spring and
setting fire to the bushland to capture game such as wallabies, kangaroos and possums; their main camp was at
Mount Eliza in what is now
Kings Park.
At the time of European settlement,
Yellagonga, the uncle of
Yagan, was the leader of the Mooro group. Initially, relations were friendly, and a number of explorers such as
Robert Menli Lyon
Robert Menli Lyon (born Robert Milne; 1789–1874) was a pioneering Western Australian settler who became one of the earliest outspoken advocates for Indigenous Australian rights and welfare in the colony. He published the first information on the ...
and
George Grey
Sir George Grey, KCB (14 April 1812 – 19 September 1898) was a British soldier, explorer, colonial administrator and writer. He served in a succession of governing positions: Governor of South Australia, twice Governor of New Zealand, ...
reported on favourable encounters with groups of Mooro.
John Butler, a Swan River settler who in March 1834 went north to search for cattle pasture, reported that "the natives were those Wanneroo men who frequent Perth in company with the Yellagonga tribe – they were friendly towards us but we were cautious in letting them see our bread". However, competing demands for resources and cultural misunderstandings resulted in conflict.
By the late 1830s, having been largely removed or restricted from the lands on which they had been self-sufficient, and decimated by European diseases and conflict with settlers,
the traditional lifestyle had gone into demise. A census by Francis Armstrong (1836 C.S.O. 58:163) counted 28 Mooro. Within less than twenty years, the community had basically disintegrated, with the remaining people exiled to permanent waterholes on the outskirts of Perth.
References
{{Reflist
Noongar
Swan Coastal Plain