Details

Latitude

-36.09129

Longitude

146.90619

Start Date

1898

End Date

1898

State

VIC

Feature Term

river

Name for Murray River. In 'Letters from Victorian pioneers, being a series of papers on the early occupation of the colony, the aborigines, etc' Settler Mackay wrote: "I took my stock back to the Hume River (Nurengong)." https://archive.org/stream/lettersfromvicto00publiala/lettersfromvicto00publiala_djvu.txtAt the time the 'Hume River' was the colonists name for the Murray River. So it seems Nurengong, as an Aboriginal word may have been the name for the Murray River, or the Murray River in the vicinity of the south road (now the Hume Highway), so around Albury/Wodonga.So this would likely be a Wiradjuri/Waveroo/Dhudhuroa word. Another reference to the word is in an 1848 description of the boundaries of pastoralists runs, as 'Nurengong Plain', suggesting either that Nurengong is the word for the general area, or that it's simply the plain of the Nurengong river. In any case this may be simply the name of a plain assigned at a later date based on the name used by Mackay.https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/230149524/14255009I haven't checked Wiradjuri language for the possible meaning of Nurengong.

Sources