The moment can be traced back to April 1911 when two large Aboriginal burial site disturbances were reported in South Australia; firstly on Ngarrindjeri Country at Swanport near Murray Bridge and a week later at the Fulham Park Estate, Kaurna Country.

In the late 1800s the former Fulham Park Estate extended from Grange Road to south of Henley Beach Road. Locals farmed some of the vast area and other parts were used as a horse stud.  On Thursday 20 April 1911, the Advertiser reported:

• During the last few days a number of aboriginal skeletons have been found at Fulham, where a gardener, Mr. W. Skuse, is removing a sandhill to make room for his early vegetable planting. The locality is part of Mr. W. A. Blackler’s Fulham Park Estate, close to the bank of the River Torrens, and the place must have been used as a burying ground in ages past, as Mr. J. Mahoney, who is removing the sand, stated on Wednesday that about 20 skeletons had been met with during the work in hand. They had been buried close together and about 3 or 4 ft. below the surface of the red sand. There was evidence that a fire had been lighted over each body when it was buried, as there still remained a white ash-like substance and bits of charcoal...[1]

When Adelaide Museum Director Edward Charles Stirling learned of the Fulham discovery he communicated with the Police department who instructed Corporal Pethick that the remains were to be handed over to the Museum.  Stirling dispatched museum curator Mr Zietz to the site on the Saturday where he met Corporal Pethick others. The museum officials took photos of the spot and stated they would come back on the Monday to carefully unearth the remains.[2]

Pethick was concerned about the decision to wait until Monday and for good reason. When Pethick returned to the site the next day (Sunday), three skulls had disappeared.  Stirling wrote to the Commissioner of Police expressing his regret that his officials ‘were not permitted to remove them on Saturday when they arrived to do so’.[3] Pethick rebutted by detailing the matter in his report back to the Commissioner:

• ….I pointed out to them that the place where the remains were was near a public thoroughfare through Fulham Park Estate to Grange Road and probably someone might come there and interfere with them in Mr Skuse’s absence from there at his residence at Thebarton the following day Sunday and in the meantime Dr W. Ramsay Smith arrived there in a Motor Car with some card board boxes to put the remains in, but did not take any away, and after a few minutes conversation on the spot, the Museum authorities stated that they would come on Monday for them and left there with Dr. W. Ramsay Smith together in his Motor Car.

• On Sunday 23rd Inst. I received instructions from Inspr. Orr Hd. Qrs that none of the remains found at Fulham were to be removed until further instructions. I proceeded again to Fulham and on my arrival to the place I found the skulls that were left the previous day were missing, and had been earthed by someone. I made inquiries as to their disappearance and all the information I could obtain re the same was that Mrs J. Horsley, wife of an employee of Mr. Blackler’s Fulham Park Estate who lives near Mr Skuse’s place, saw two gentlemen with a basket on Sunday morning going from the direction of where the remains were found towards the gate that leads into the Road near there.[4]

In the meantime, Stirling advised the Museum Committee:

• Owing to some interference, in part similar to that which occurred at Swanport, Mr Zietz was unable at first, to remove the bones that had been unearthed and when, the difficulties having been removed, Mr Zietz again went down some of the skulls had disappeared. What bones were left were secured for the Museum and are now here.[5]

Stirling’s Committee report was published in the Advertiser that week. The ‘difficulties’ that prevented Zietz from retrieving the skeletal material on his first visit to Fulham were reported as a consequence of a lack of expertise to dispatch to the field at the time of each discovery, resulting in chaotic, unsecured worksites.

Stirling’s criticisms of what he described as the chaotic manner in which both discoveries were managed by government officers were in his view missed opportunities to collect important scientific data. His influence persuaded the Commissioner of Crown Lands to issue an instruction that would ensure the Adelaide Museum would thereafter become the recipient and repository of all Aboriginal ancestral remains disturbed on Crown Lands. The system stayed in place until the early 1980s, and by the end of the 20th century over 600 Kaurna ancestors (as well as many from other parts of South Australia) had been brought to the Museum.

Wangayarta was developed by the Kaurna People together with the South Australian Museum in response to this history.  Since 2021, over 580 Kaurna ancestors have been repatriated from the South Australian Museum, Adelaide University and overseas institutions and reburied by the Kaurna community at Wangayarta in the four mounds across the site representing the north, south, east and west of Kaurna Country. The ancestors disturbed at Fulham in 1911 were reburied by the community in the Wangayarta western mound in 2022. 

[1] Advertiser 20/4/1911, p. 6.

[2] Advertiser 25/4/1911, p. 8.

[3] Letter E.C. Stirling to Commissioner of Police 27 April 1911 (8453)

[4] Pethick Report 3 May 1911

[5] Letter from Stirling to Museum Committee 2/5/1911.