Coranderrk government reserve was established in 1863 on the traditional land of Wurundjeri people who roamed the upper and lower reaches of the Yarra River. It covered 2000 hectares of fertile mountain country in Victoria's Yarra Valley, near Healesville, and attracted Aboriginal people from across the five Kulin tribes of Central Victoria. In mid-1864, there were around 70 Aboriginal people living at the reserve.
Historian Tom Griffiths has noted that Coranderrk was "perhaps the earliest example of a large Aboriginal community that modified its lifeway to the European mode. Aborigines built huts, cleared and worked the land, and produced and sold cloaks, baskets, boomerangs and other artefacts. Coranderrk became a tourist attraction of the upper Yarra." It was also the most photographed Aboriginal community in Australia during the nineteenth century, with numerous European photographers and anthropologists documenting their life.
In the 1870s, when officials threatened to close Coranderrk and sell off its rich grazing land, Wurundjeri elder William Barak led the first Coranderrk Rebellion, marching with residents to Melbourne to claim ownership of land he called "my father's country". For Barak, Coranderrk was both a home and a last link to his vanishing culture and heritage. Barak and others sent a petition to the Victorian Government in 1886, which says: "Could we get our freedom to go away Shearing and Harvesting and to come home when we wish and also to go for the good of our Health when we need it ... We should be free like the White Population there is only few Blacks now rem[a]ining in Victoria, we are all dying away now and we Blacks of Aboriginal Blood, wish to have now freedom for all our life time ... Why does the Board seek in these latter days more stronger authority over us Aborigines than it has yet been?"
This early Aboriginal land rights movement was a success. Barak and the Coranderrk people had not only gained a permanent homeland, but the respect and patronage of Melbourne identities like future Prime Minister Alfred Deakin and opera singer Nellie Melba.
But by the turn of the century, Coranderrk's population quickly declined as official assimilation policies forced so-called 'half-caste' Aboriginals off the station. As young residents were absorbed into European society, Coranderrk met a steady demise and was formally closed in 1924.
When the bulk of Coranderrk station was gazetted for Soldier Settlement after the two world wars, former Coranderrk residents who served in the wars received none of the land. Healesville Sanctuary, a popular zoo for Australian native animals, occupies part of the original Coranderrk reserve.
In March 1998, part of Coranderrk was returned to the Wurundjeri Tribe Land Compensation and Cultural Heritage Council when the Indigenous Land Corporation purchased 0.81 km².
Coranderrk was added to the Australian National Heritage List in 2011.
'Coranderrk Station (Vic)', Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://oa.anu.edu.au/entity/14880/text35596, accessed 2 May 2025.