Wallaga Lake is an

estuarine An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environm ...

lake in

Bega Valley Shire The Bega Valley Shire is a Local government in Australia, local government area located adjacent to the South Coast, New South Wales, south-eastern coastline of New South Wales, Australia. The Shire was formed in 1981 with the amalgamation of t ...

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, Australia, the largest

lake A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from ...

in southern NSW. It is located between Bermagui to the south and between Tilba Tilba to the north, situated beneath Mount Gulaga, in the traditional lands of the

Yuin people The Yuin nation, also spelt Djuwin, is a group of Australian Aboriginal peoples from the South Coast of New South Wales. All Yuin people share ancestors who spoke, as their first language, one or more of the Yuin language dialects. Sub-group ...

. A large section of its foreshore and

catchment A drainage basin is an area of land in which all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, th ...

are within the

Gulaga National Park Gulaga National Park is a national park on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia, about south of Narooma. The park is dominated by Gulaga, also known as Mount Gulaga (formerly Mount Dromedary). The former Wallaga Lake National Park, Go ...

, since

Wallaga Lake National Park Wallaga Lake National Park is a former national park in New South Wales, south-west of Sydney and north of Bermagui. It now forms part of a greater Gulaga National Park. In 2001, as part of the Southern Comprehensive Regional Forest Agreemen ...

, Goura Nature Reserve, and Mt Dromedary Flora Reserve were combined into the larger

national park A national park is a nature park designated for conservation (ethic), conservation purposes because of unparalleled national natural, historic, or cultural significance. It is an area of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that is protecte ...

.PDF
Text may have been copied from this source, which is available under
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
licence. (se
here
) There is an island in the lake known as Merriman's Island, Merriman Island or Umbarra. The

's surface area is , while its

area spans , consisting mainly of Dignams Creek and Narira Creek and tributaries. While the lake itself and most of its

fall within the Bega Valley Shire, the northern part of the catchment lies within

Eurobodalla Shire Council Eurobodalla Shire is a local government area located in the South Coast region of New South Wales, Australia. The Shire is located in a largely mountainous coastal region and situated adjacent to the ''Tasman Sea'', the Princes Highway and the ...

. It is classified as an Intermittently Closed and Open Lake or Lagoon (ICOLL), because the entrance of the lake sometimes allows tidal exchange from the ocean, but at other times is closed off by a

sand bar In oceanography, geomorphology, and geoscience, a shoal is a natural submerged ridge, bank, or bar that consists of, or is covered by, sand or other unconsolidated material, and rises from the bed of a body of water close to the surface or ...

at the beach. It is a popular spot for

recreational fishing Recreational fishing, also called sport fishing or game fishing, is fishing for leisure, exercise or competition. It can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is occupational fishing activities done for profit; or subsistence fishing, ...

, sailing,

bushwalking A hike is a long, vigorous walking, walk, usually on trails or footpaths in the countryside. Walking for pleasure developed in Europe during the eighteenth century. Long hikes as part of a religious pilgrimage have existed for a much longer tim ...

and

birdwatching Birdwatching, or birding, is the observing of birds, either as a recreational activity or as a form of citizen science. A birdwatcher may observe by using their naked eye, by using a visual enhancement device such as binoculars or a telescop ...

Aboriginal history and present significance

The Wallaga Lake Aboriginal Station or Wallaga Lake Station, was an

Aboriginal reserve An Aboriginal reserve, also called simply reserve, was a government-sanctioned settlement for Aboriginal Australians, created under various state and federal legislation. Along with missions and other institutions, they were used from the 19th ...

near the lake, was established in 1891 by the Aborigines Protection Board of New South Wales (APB). It was categorised as an "Aboriginal station" or "managed reserve", which was a type of reserve established by the APB from 1883 onwards that was managed by APB-appointed officials. Education (in the form of preparation for the workforce), rations and housing were usually provided on these reserves, and station managers tightly controlled who could, and could not, live there. Text may have been copied from this source, which is available under
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
licence. (Se
here
) The land on reserves called stations was often unproductive, or there was not enough labour, and therefore little chance for the reserve to become self-sustaining. The Superintendent of the Reserve was also the teacher at the Wallaga Lake Aboriginal School that was established in March 1887. The Aboriginal population of the Tathra area was removed to an

near the lake after colonisation of the area in the early to mid 19th century, under the control of the Aborigines Protection Board of New South Wales (APB). A 1925 account of people on the reserve tells of much fishing activity by both men and women, wood carvings which are sold to passers-by, the skilled use of the gum leaf as a musical instrument, being employed to work in the maize fields, the bora ceremony and other lore.Julie Dibden. Bega Valley Shire Council Various Works - Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Assessment Report, 2017 The lake is of significance to the

, being home to the black duck, a

totem A totem (from or ''doodem'') is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage (anthropology), lineage, or tribe, such as in the Anishinaabe clan system. While the word ...

connected with the elder,

Umbarra Umbarra, or King Merriman (died 1904) was an Aboriginal elder, elder of the Djirringanj/Yuin people of the Bermagui, New South Wales, Bermagui area on what has become called the Sapphire Coast since European Colonial settlement of far-southern ...

(aka "King Merriman", who died in 1904), who lived on Merriman's Island (aka Merriman Island and Umbarra) in the lake. In June 1978

Guboo Ted Thomas Edwin "Guboo" Ted Thomas (29 January 1909 – 19 May 2002), a Yuin man, was a prominent Aboriginal leader. He toured Australia with a gumleaf orchestra during the Great Depression of the 1930s, played rugby league and became a respected eld ...

, a leader in the campaign for

Indigenous land rights in Australia In Australia, Indigenous land rights or Aboriginal land rights are the rights and interests in land of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people; the term may also include the struggle for those rights. Connection to the land and ...

, wrote to then NSW Premier

Neville Wran Neville Kenneth Wran, (11 October 1926 – 20 April 2014) was an Australian politician who was the Premier of New South Wales from 1976 to 1986. He was the national president of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1980 to 1986 and chairman o ...

: "We, the Aboriginal people of Wallaga Lake and members of the Yuin tribe, do hereby place before you and the Government of New South Wales our claim for our Land Rights". In 2006, after a protracted battle for recognition of

native title Aboriginal title is a common law doctrine that the land rights of indigenous peoples to customary tenure persist after the assumption of sovereignty to that land by another colonising state. The requirements of proof for the recognition of ab ...

, the lake was included in a handover of the Gulaga and

Biamanga National Park Biamanga National Park is a protected area in New South Wales, Australia, south of Sydney and north of Bega. The park forms part of the Ulladulla to Merimbula Important Bird Area because of its importance for swift parrots. Its name derives ...

s to the Yuin people, to be jointly managed by the

traditional owners Native title is the set of rights, recognised by Australian law, held by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups or individuals to land that derive from their maintenance of their traditional laws and customs. These Aboriginal title rig ...

and the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. The agreement was signed by then New South Wales Environment Minister

Bob Debus Robert John Debus (born 16 September 1943) is a former Australian politician who served as a member of the Australian House of Representatives and the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, representing the Labor Party. Debus has been a minist ...

and representatives for the Yuin people. The island is gazetted as an Aboriginal place and is not accessible to the public.

Midden A midden is an old dump for domestic waste. It may consist of animal bones, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofacts associated with past human oc ...

s and other Aboriginal artefacts have been found around the lake. Under Commonwealth native title law, Aboriginal people are allowed to fish on the lake without a State Government permit, but in around 2015 the NSW Aboriginal Fishing Rights Group decided to negotiate a cultural fishing permit under the ''Fisheries Management Act 1994'' (NSW) in the spirit of collaboration with the

Government of New South Wales The Government of New South Wales, also known as the NSW Government, is the executive state government of New South Wales, Australia. The government comprises 11 portfolios, led by a ministerial department and supported by several agencies. Th ...

, and they have been working closely ever since. In April 2020, men from the Bermagui Wallaga Lake

Djiringanj The Djiringanj, also spelt Dyirringañ, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the southern coast of New South Wales. They are one of a larger group, known as the Yuin people, who all speak or spoke dialects of the Yuin–Kuric group of languages ...

men's group launched their new hand-built net fishing boat at the lake, thus reviving an old cultural tradition, thanks to a grant from the government. Young men from the community target species like flathead,

bream Bream (, ) are species of freshwater fish belonging to a variety of genera including '' Abramis'' (e.g., ''A. brama'', the common bream), '' Ballerus'', '' Blicca'', '' Brama'', '' Chilotilapia'', '' Etelis'', '' Lepomis'', '' Gymnocranius'', ...

, and mullet, and hand over their catch to local elders. They see it as a way of helping people who live below the

poverty line The poverty threshold, poverty limit, poverty line, or breadline is the minimum level of income deemed adequate in a particular country. The poverty line is usually calculated by estimating the total cost of one year's worth of necessities for ...

, and suffer from poor nutrition, particularly lack of

iodine Iodine is a chemical element; it has symbol I and atomic number 53. The heaviest of the stable halogens, it exists at standard conditions as a semi-lustrous, non-metallic solid that melts to form a deep violet liquid at , and boils to a vi ...

, and diseases such as

heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is any disease involving the heart or blood vessels. CVDs constitute a class of diseases that includes: coronary artery diseases (e.g. angina pectoris, angina, myocardial infarction, heart attack), heart failure, ...

and

diabetes Diabetes mellitus, commonly known as diabetes, is a group of common endocrine diseases characterized by sustained high blood sugar levels. Diabetes is due to either the pancreas not producing enough of the hormone insulin, or the cells of th ...

brought on partly by poor nutrition.

Aboriginal history and present significance

References

Further reading