The Southern Kaurna Place Names Project
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The Southern Kaurna Place Names Project The writing of this essay was funded as part of The Kaurna Project 2015-7 (coordinator Rob Amery) by the Commonwealth of Australia Ministry for the Arts through its Indigenous Languages and Arts (Languages) program. I am grateful to Gavin Malone for enthusiastically sharing with me his library research and on-the-ground investigations around the Willunga Basin; and for his encouragement. This and other essays may be downloaded free of charge from https://www.adelaide.edu.au/kwp/placenames/research-publ/ Place Name SUMMARY (PNS) 4.03.02/04 TATATYILLA and ‘TORTACHILLA’ (last edited: 15.12.2016) NOTE AND DISCLAIMER: This essay has not been peer-reviewed or culturally endorsed in detail. The spellings and interpretations contained in it (linguistic, historical and geographical) are my own, and do not necessarily represent the views of KWP/KWK or its members or any other group. I have studied history at tertiary level. Though not a linguist, for 30 years I have learned much about the Kaurna, Ramindjeri-Ngarrindjeri and Narungga languages while working with KWP, Rob Amery, and other local culture- reclamation groups; and from primary documents I have learned much about the Aboriginal history of the Adelaide-Fleurieu region. My explorations of 'language on the land' through the Southern Kaurna Place Names Project are part of an ongoing effort to correct the record about Aboriginal place-names in this region (which has abounded in confusions and errors), and to add reliable new material into the public domain. I hope upcoming generations will continue this work and improve it. My interpretations should be amplified, re- considered and if necessary modified by KWP or other linguists, and by others engaged in cultural mapping: Aboriginal people, archaeologists, geographers, ecologists and historians. Chester Schultz, 21 July 2017. PNS 4.03.02/04 by Chester Schultz © 2016 15.12.2016 | 1 of 16 The Southern Kaurna Place Names Project TATATYILLA and ‘TORTACHILLA’ (last edited: 15.12.2016) Abstract Tatatyilla is the Kaurna name for a site centred around a “well” or waterhole in Willunga Creek at Aldinga town, north of the Aldinga Arts Eco Village. It was recorded as “Tar-ta-chil-la” and “Tartarchilla” by survey labourer Louis Piesse during the first surveys of the area in 1839, and he must have obtained it from some of the Aboriginal men who were employed in the Aldinga surveys that year. He located it at “Section 399, District C” (now Hundred of Willunga). No meaning is known for the name except its Locative suffix illa ‘at, place of’. There was a “Well” on the creek here when the surveyors first sketched the Section in 1839, and a line of trees still signals the presence of reliable water. The vicinity was apparently a campsite, probably used by Aboriginal travellers as a water stop on their way between the Ngangkiparingga crossing (Onkaparinga ford) to the north,1 Wilangga (Willunga) to the east,2 the coastal water sources Tirranangku and Ruwuru 2 km downstream at Port Willunga,3 and southward to the high pass near Kurtandilla (Sellicks Hill).4 Almost as soon as the name was passed on to the surveyors, they shifted it four km northwest to use it for their trig station ‘Tartachilla’ on Section 378, at the prominent cliff now called Blanche Point.5 At some stage later in the 19th century one of the Survey Department’s draftsmen misspelled and mapped the trig name as ‘Tortachilla’. This version passed into local use as the name of the whole area of sandstone cliffs and hills between Maslin Beach and Port Willunga. The version ‘Tartachilla’, re-spelled as ‘Tatachilla’, was used for the road leading to the trig area, and then as the name of JG Kelly’s farm on that road; the farm became Tatachilla Vineyard and Winery. The current suburb is named after it. There is no linguistic or historical credibility in the claims (originating with Tindale and his Ngarrindjeri-speaking informant Albert Karlowan) that ‘Tortachilla’ means ‘red earth’ and ‘red earth 1 See PNS 4.02/04 Ngangkiparingga. 2 See PNS 4.04.02/02 Wilangga. 3 See PNS 4.02/02 Tirranangku and /03 Ruwuru; 4.04.01/03 Wakondilla. 4 See PNS 4.04/03/03 Kurtandilla. 5 The precise location of the trig station has been moved several times since then. PNS 4.03.02/04 by Chester Schultz © 2016 15.12.2016 | 2 of 16 The Southern Kaurna Place Names Project ending’,6 or ‘red sandstone bluff’.7 These are descriptions of the site, based on accepting ‘Tortachilla’ as a valid Aboriginal place-name, which it is not. Coordinates Latitude -35.263728°, Longitude 138.479104° [nominal centre of line of big trees in creek] Language Information Meaning Unknown Etymology tatatyV [meaning unknown] + illa ‘at’ Notes A place-name need not have a dictionary meaning. Language Family Thura-Yura: ‘Kaurna’ KWP Former Spelling Tatatyilla KWP New Spelling 2010 Tatatyilla Phonemic Spelling /thaTatyila/ Syllabification “Tata-tyilla”: Pronunciation tips Stress the first syllable. Secondary stress on 2nd syllable. Every ‘a’ as in Maori ‘haka’ (not as in ‘cat’). Main source evidence Date Sep 1839 Original source text - “Well brakish” [marked on Section 399, Hundred of Willunga, District C (= western part of today’s Aldinga town)] - “Valley / water brakish” [marked along creek on Sections 391-2 to 399] - “present track” [over-written by] “proposed road to Adelaide” [marked on Sections 394-5 & 399-400, on two versions of a north-south road (= today’s Main South Rd & Old Main South Rd)] - “proposed road to Willunga” [marked on eastward road through Sections 440, 401, 229 (= today’s Flour Mill Rd)] - [two east-west tracks marked faintly, one on each side of the creek, joining in the east at Section 399 (Old Coach Rd), and extending west to 396] Reference Richard Counsel 1839, Field Book 102, Hundred of Willunga: 37. Informants credited Informants uncredited 6 Tindale annotated map AA 338/24/97; Tindale Kaurna place-name card [630] in AA 338/7/1/12; GH Manning 2006, Manning’s Place Names of South Australia: From Aaron Creek to Zion Hill, Modbury: Gould Books: 57, 424. 7 A Pridmore 1949, The Rich Valley: An Account of the Early Life of McLaren Vale, McLaren Vale Institute Committee: 28. PNS 4.03.02/04 by Chester Schultz © 2016 15.12.2016 | 3 of 16 The Southern Kaurna Place Names Project Date Oct 1839 Original source text “Tar-ta-chil-la – section 399, district C”. Reference Louis Piesse, letter 18 Oct 1839, in SA Colonist Vol. 1 No.19, 1840: 296. Informants credited Informants uncredited Kaurna survey guides employed on ‘Aldinga survey’ 1839 Date n.d. [?1839-40] Original source text [on bottom diagram] - “Sea” - “Tartachilla” [trig station triangle, at extreme NW corner of part of Section 378 (= tip of today’s Blanche Point); a bearing marked from here toward ‘McLeods Hill’] Reference Ide n.d., Field Book 28 Hundreds of Encounter Bay, Myponga, Willunga & Yankalilla, GNU: no pagination [p.3b]. Informants credited Corporal Henry Ide of survey team from Royal Sappers & Miners Informants uncredited Date [1839] / 1840 Original source text - “Swampy valley” [along Willunga Creek across Section 391 & into 392, i.e. to a short way east of Bowering Hill Rd] r - “W Brackich” [sic] [on Section 399] - “Well” [marked near east end of Section 399 = about 250m west of Old Coach Rd] Reference John Arrowsmith map 1/9/1840 ‘Country South of Adelaide...’, London, Arrowsmith. Informants credited Informants uncredited Date 1843 Original source text “Tartachilla” [first ‘a’ is badly formed; could be misread as “Tortachilla”] Reference Plan 1/31, [Hindmarsh County (Yankalilla) Forrest Origl 1843], GNU. Informants credited Sgt. William Forrest of survey team from Royal Sappers & Miners Informants uncredited Date Nov 1843 Original source text c “Tarta^ hilla” [trig station name hand-written on map] Reference Plan 1/7, ‘Diagram No. 2 South District November 1843’ [Cape Jervis to Murray Mouth – Forrest Origl 1843]. Informants credited “Wm Forrest Serjeant Royal Sappers & Miners / 1st November 1843” Informants uncredited PNS 4.03.02/04 by Chester Schultz © 2016 15.12.2016 | 4 of 16 The Southern Kaurna Place Names Project Date 1844 Original source text “I must now strongly advise the tourist to take a walk up Mount Terrible for the commanding prospect that can be obtained from its summit... To the right-hand the south side of the Mount Lofty Range, and the whole country between spread as a carpet, dotted here and there with a farm or homestead; the coast can be discerned all along—the boat harbour of Tartarchilla, the mouth of the Onkaparinga, Holdfast Bay, and the Port... Returning [from Mt Terrible] and keeping more towards the coast, we cross the plain called Aldinga (properly Ngaltingga)... Keeping along the plain four miles brings us to the grassy gully called Tartarchilla. There is no surface water in this gully in the summer, but there is a considerable underground drainage which may be demonstrated by the fact that on a well being sunk it overflowed, and kept full to overflowing even during the drought of last year. The country in this neighbourhood is generally lightly timbered with She Oak (Casuarinae), the Honeysuckle (Banksia integrifolia), prevailing in any little hollows or gullies. The next gully is Cunyanyapella, in which the large tea tree (Melaleuca linariifolia) and reeds at once show that the water is permanent. There is some very good land in this gully, and it is superior to the last-mentioned gully of Tartarchilla.” Reference ‘L.P.’ [Louis Piesse] 1844, ‘Descriptive Tour Through Part of District C’, Observer 13/4/1844: 8a.