The Wadawurrung People are the traditional owners of the Ballarat region.
- The local environment, on which Wadawurrung People depended, was irreversibly changed by European colonisation.
- Without help from the Wadawurrung People, miners found it difficult to survive.
- Wadawurrung People helped Europeans to find gold and even profited off it directly
- The supply of local foods by Wadawurrung People was important to miners on the goldfields.
- Sharing bush medicine with non-Indigenous immigrants saved lives.
- The Wadawurrung People participated in the European economy through trade.
- During the early gold rush some Aboriginal men played a crucial role as Native Police.
- Collectors bought, stole and traded Wadawurrung artefacts which trivialised their cultural significance and helped Europeans confirm their theories of the “primitive savage”