Colonel William Light, one of Adelaide's founding fathers, designed the city and chose its location close to the River Torrens in the area originally inhabited by the Kaurna people.

Tjilbruke was an important figure in the Dreamtime stories of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains.

The lower reaches of the Onkaparinga River were inhabited by the Kaurna Aboriginal people, and the name of the river is taken from the Kaurna name meaning chief.

Kaurna people still have strong ties to the area through cultural practices and religious beliefs.

The area around the mouth of Brown Hill Creek, where the suburb of Mitcham now exists, was known to the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains as Wirraparinga, meaning " creek and scrub place ".

The Kaurna people were the indigenous inhabitants of the Adelaide region, which includes One Tree Hill.

The Kaurna people are a group of Indigenous Australians whose traditional lands include the area around the Adelaide Plains of South Australia.

" Uncle " Lewis O ' Brien, a Kaurna Elder during the 1990s, suggested that a more appropriate name for his people might be Meyunna, from the local word for " people ", meyu.

However, " Kaurna " has been almost universally adopted by Kaurna and non-indigenous people alike to refer to the tribe of the Adelaide plains.

The stringy bark forests of the Mount Lofty Ranges have been claimed as a traditional boundary between Kaurna and Peramangk people.

Kaurna also resided in the Burnside Suburb area ; an early settler of the village of Beaumont described the local people thus:

The Kaurna people were a hunter-gatherer society.

In 2000, a group called Kaurna Yerta Corporation lodged a native title claim on behalf of the Kaurna people.

In 2009, a group called Encompass Technology wrote to the Governor of South Australia on behalf of the Kaurna people, asserting sovereignty over the Marble Hill ruins in the Adelaide Hills, and the Warriparinga Living Kaurna Cultural Centre in Marion, and that they were owed nearly $ 50 million in rent.

In recent years the river has been dually known by the indigenous Kaurna people ’ s name of Karra wirra-parri ( meaning river of the Red Gum forest ), referring to the dense eucalyptus forest that lined its banks prior to clearing by early settlers.

The neighbouring Kaurna people ( from the Adelaide plains ) had a tale about an ancestral giant who fell in battle and whose body formed part of the Mount Lofty Ranges, with his ears forming Mount Lofty and Mount Bonython.

The word is from the Weira group of the Kaurna Aboriginal people, meaning water running by the side of a river.

Their patrilineal culture and ritual practices were also distinct from that of the surrounding people which has been attributed by Aboriginal historian Graham Jenkin to their enmity with the Kaurna to the west, who practised circumcision and monopolised red ochre, the Merkani ( Ngarrindjeri for " enemy ") to the east, who stole Ngarrindjeri women and were reputed to be cannibals and to the north the Ngadjuri who were believed to send mulapi (" clever men " i. e.: sorcerers ) and, although not sharing a border, the Nukunu who were thought to be sorcerers, incestuous and prone to commit rape.

Located on what was traditionally the land of the Kaurna ( indigenous ) people, the first pioneers arrived sometime between 1867 and 1869 due to the rapid expansion of farming to the north of the area.

Some were the names of the Kaurna bands who lived there.

The Kaurna lived in family groups called yerta, a word which also referred to the area of land which supported the family group.

The Kaurna are the Indigenous Australians who lived on the Adelaide Plains of South Australia, before European settlement.

The Kaurna led a nomadic existence within the Yerta confines in large family groups of around 30.

There are several Peramangk words recorded in a variety of sources ;-ku: itpo-sacred or forbidden place ;-maitpana: likkya-food for them ( a ration station near Mount Barker );-poona: good / healthy / fertile ( poonawatta-Lyndoch Valley );-watta ( worta ): a persons land or country ;-tarra: land that rises up, a steep hill or ridge ;-karra: redgum ( same as in the Kaurna );-kungatukko: womens look out ( in Peramangk a hard TT sound is sometimes ; replaced with a hard KK sound instead );-wadnar: digging or climbing stick ;-kakirra: moon ;-nurrondi: enchant / charm ;-meyuworta ( meruwatta ): countryman / a person belonging to the same family group ;-marnitti: grease to mix with ochre to cover the body ;-mambarti: hair matted with grease and red ochre ;-kuyeta: first born son ;-kartiatto: first born daughter ;-yarida: bad magic ;-lantara: ghost or spirit ;-tinda: a persons totem ;

Teichelmann noted that this flexibility in both Kaurna and Peramangk languages allowed for the creation and pronunciation that was neither uniform nor consistent across family and culture groups

The Kaurna population, which may have originally numbered up to 1000, had been seriously depleted in 1830 due to a smallpox epidemic which is thought to have originated in the eastern states and spread along the Murray River as Indigenous groups traded with each other.

Wiltjas are shelters made by the Kaurna people and other Indigenous Australian groups such as the Pitjantjatjara and yankunytjatjara people / groups.

The Peramangk would trade fire making kits, ( Kangaroo thigh bones filled with pyrite, flint, and tinder ) with their neighbours the Kaurna and possibly other groups as well.

The Poonawatta or Wallaby People hosted meetings between peoples such as the Mauraura, Kaurna, Nanguruku, Ngaiawang, Ngadjuri and other Peramangk groups, as recorded by George French Angas in the 1840s.

There are other stories connected to the two peaks, one concerning Two Men and another referring to the two moiety groups of the Kaurna and probably the Peramangk people as well.

However, the last surviving full-blood Kaurna, a woman called Ivaritji, died in 1931.

The early settlers of South Australia referred to the various Kaurna bands of the Adelaide Plains and Fleurieu Peninsula as being separate tribes such as " the Adelaide tribe " ( the Kouwandilla band ), " the Noarlunga tribe " ( the Ngurlonnga band ) and the Willunga tribe ( the Willangga band ) etc.

Although this custom was hated by some victims, as arranged marriages were the norm, some women saw it as an opportunity to choose their own partners and actively encouraged a preferred suitor, all Kaurna bands are said to have engaged in the practice regularly.

Each yerta was the responsibility of Kaurna adults who inherited the land and had an intimate knowledge of its resources and features.

A main Kaurna presence was in Tarndanyangga (" red kangaroo rock place ") near the River Torrens and the creeks that flowed into it, an area which became the site of the Adelaide city centre.

Among their customs was the practice of fire-stick farming ( deliberately lit bushfires for hunting purposes ) in the Adelaide Hills, which the early European settlers spotted before the Kaurna were displaced.

Interest in collecting and conserving Kaurna culture was not common until their display at the 1887 Paris exhibition spurred an interest in Indigenous culture, by which time the Kaurna traditional culture was no longer practiced.

William Williams and James Cronk were the first settlers to gain a working knowledge of the language, and to publish a Kaurna wordlist, which they did in 1840.

The Kaurna know the area as Tarndanyangga and in line with the Adelaide City Council's recognition of Kaurna country, ( although Ramindjeri Native Title Federal Court Callover 2010, has cast into question just what is Kaurna ) which has caused a great concern amongst the living descendants of Kaurna today as the Ramindjeri claim over this country has been argued through fabrication of the historical settlers accounts, but it is officially referred to as Victoria Square / Tarndanyangga ( which means in the Kaurna language-the Dreaming Place of the Red Kangaroo ).

Kaurna numbers were greatly reduced by at least two devastating epidemics of smallpox which preceded European settlement, having been transported downstream along the Murray River.

The prefix " Para " is derived from the Kaurna word " Pari " meaning a stream of flowing water, which could refer to either the Little Para River or Dry Creek.

In addition, the dark patches mark the dwelling place of a dangerous creature known as a yura ; the Kaurna call these patches Yurakauwe, which literally means " monster water.