Marn Grook, marn-grook or marngrook is the popular collective name for traditional Indigenous Australian football games played at gatherings and celebrations by sometimes more than 100 players. From the Woiwurung language of the Kulin people, it means "ball" and "game".
Australian Aboriginal domestic scene depicting traditional recreation, including one child kicking the ball, with the object and caption being to "never let the ball hit the ground". (From William Blandowski's Australien in 142 Photographischen Abbildungen, 1857, (Haddon Library, Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge)
Marn Grook (detail)
Australian football pioneer Tom Wills grew up as the only white child among Djab wurrung Aborigines in Western Victoria
Tom Wills monument in Moyston makes a claim to the Marn Grook connection
Woiwurrung–Taungurung language
Woiwurrung and Taungurung are Aboriginal languages of the Kulin nation of Central Victoria. Woiwurrung was spoken by the Woiwurrung and related peoples in the Yarra River basin, and Taungurung by the Taungurung people north of the Great Dividing Range in the Goulburn River Valley around Mansfield, Benalla and Heathcote. They are often portrayed as distinct languages, but they were mutually intelligible. Ngurai-illamwurrung (Ngurraiillam) may have been a clan name, a dialect, or a closely related language.
Marn grook football, played by speakers of Woiwurrung from the Wurundjeri clan, c. 1857
Welcome sign on Medley building, University of Melbourne
