‘Konggaratingga’ (Blowhole Creek)
Date
2013-06-06
Authors
Schultz, Chester
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‘Konggaratingga’ is RM Berndt’s spelling of the Kaurna name which (according to him) Ngarrindjeri man Albert Karlowan applied around 1940 to a cave on the southern Fleurieu coast at Blowhole Creek. In Karlowan’s version of the story the ancestral hero Tjirbuki, after his long underground journey, emerged here already transformed into a bird. The name is one possible phonetic spelling of ‘Congeratinga’, recorded by the first surveyors in 1840 as the name of a river northeast of Second Valley. However, at Blowhole Creek ‘Konggaratingga’ is almost certainly an error: either a confusion by Karlowan or a misunderstanding by Berndt. ‘Kongarati Cave’ in the cliffs near today’s Wirrina Resort was named (probably by Tindale) after the nearby River Congeratinga, and it is very likely that this name was mistakenly transferred to the other cave at Blowhole Beach.