Turrangga

Abstract

Turrangga (or, in KWP’s New Spelling 2010, Turangga) is the Kaurna name of a site on Section 477, a kilometre east of McLaren Vale township, around the north side of the junction of Kangarilla Rd and Sand Rd. The name and location was recorded in 1839 by survey assistant Louis Piesse. It was on the eastern margin of the Daringa Swamp or ‘Billabong’ (extinct now for a century after local drainage and upstream development modified the water flow). Here the slopes of a low hill included a waterhole on the western side, and (according to the memory of early residents) there was a burial site not far away. The name means ‘place of shade, shadow or reflection [in water]’.