Wirrina

Abstract

‘Wirrina’, the name of a holiday resort between Little Gorge and Second Valley, is not a Kaurna word, nor does it belong to any other local language. It is an Aboriginal word adopted in 1972 by the resort developers Holiday Village Co-operative Ltd, who almost certainly took it from HM Cooper’s publication Australian Aboriginal Words and their meanings (1949, 2nd edition 1952), where it was listed as “Wirrina – Somewhere to go”. This word probably comes from an interstate language group, possibly around the Gwydir and Barwon rivers. Other ‘meanings’ given for this place-name in the literature – ‘forest place’ and ‘place of rest’ – have no historical or linguistic credibility. No spelling ‘wirrina’ (or possible variants) is known in South Australian literature before 1972, except as a misprint for ‘Warrina’ (the name of a hamlet on the old Great Northern Railway line to Oodnadatta).