TheKurung were identified as anindigenous Australian group of theState of Victoria byNorman Tindale. The theory that they constituted an independent tribe has been challenged with modern scholarship generally considering them a clan, associated to one of two major tribes. Their language is unconfirmed.
Tindale, prefacing his remarks with an admission that '(t)he triangle betweenMelbourne,Echuca andAlbury remains one of the problem areas,'[1] cited in support of treating the Kurung as a distinct tribal entity the material given in 1856 for the deliberation of theLegislative Council of Victoria. According to this early documentation, the Kurung were one of 5 distinct tribes in and around Melbourne, the others being theTaungurong, theWurundjeri, theBunurong and theWathaurung.[2]
Diane Barwick notes that Tindale's distinction of Kurung and Wurundjeri (Woiworrung) where the former is now subsumed under the latter, raised a Wurundjeri clan to full autonomous tribal status. He did so, she suggests, from inferences drawn on the basis of a single manuscript,[3] the handiwork of aProtector of AboriginesWilliam Thomas (1793-1867) This mixed vocabulary[a] was gleaned atBacchus Marsh on theWathaurung Marpeang-bulluk clans's territory, adjacent to the lands of the WurundjeriKurung-jang-baluk and Gunung-William-baluk[5]
Tindale assigned to the Kurung an estimated 1,300 square miles (3,400 km2) of land extending from the western side ofPort Phillip Bay, between theWerribee River andGeelong and running inland up theMoorabool River as far as theGreat Dividing Range. He states that inland they inhabited areas west as far asBallarat, andBallan. Canning and Thiele have them no further north thanSunbury.[6]