Qualla: Coorong National Park

Coorong National Park: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit INCITE researchers from UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. Run your finger down a map of South Australia's south-east coast and you will trace a strange, beautiful shape: a thin sliver of water, more than 130 kilometres long, pinned between the mainland and a single high wall of dunes. This is the Coorong, and its name comes from the Ngarrindjeri word kurangk, meaning a long, narrow neck of water. On one side, the Southern Ocean hammers the longest beach in Australia. On the other, behind the dunes, the lagoon lies still and shining, salt fading to fresh along its length. Pelicans wheel overhead in the hundreds. For generations of Australians, this is the landscape of a boy and his bird.

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Image: INCITE researchers from UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Coorong National Park: Where the River Ends

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit June Lennie, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Coorong begins where the Murray River, after a journey of more than two thousand kilometres across the continent, finally reaches the sea near the Murray Mouth. From there the lagoon stretches south-east, sheltered behind the Younghusband Peninsula, which separates it from th...

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Image: June Lennie | CC BY-SA 4.0

Coorong National Park: Storm Boy Country

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hullwarren, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1964, South Australian author Colin Thiele set a small novel here, the story of a lonely boy living among the dunes who rescues an orphaned pelican and names him Mr Percival. Storm Boy became one of the most loved children's books in the country, filmed in 1976 and again in 20...

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Image: Hullwarren | CC BY-SA 3.0

Coorong National Park: Ngarrindjeri Yarluwar-Ruwe

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mundoo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Long before the novelists and the national park, this was, and remains, Ngarrindjeri country - part of what they call their yarluwar-ruwe, their sea country. The Coorong carries songlines, the threaded creation stories that map the land and water, and it holds a long inheritance ...

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Image: Mundoo | CC BY-SA 4.0

Coorong National Park: A Living Edge

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hullwarren, CC BY-SA 3.0. The park was proclaimed in 1967 as a refuge, and a refuge is exactly what it is. When drought grips the inland, migratory birds pour into the Coorong's wetlands from across the hemisphere, making it one of Australia's great gathering places for waterbirds. Banded stilts stipple t...

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Image: Hullwarren | CC BY-SA 3.0