ABSTRACT
Colonisation of the region now known as South Australia conformed to the pattern of dispossession and colonial settlement imposed on other parts of the Australian continent. From the European-Australian perspective, South Australia had some unique features. George French Angas recorded that an epidemic, which originated in New South Wales, had killed many people on the lower Murray before any direct white contact, decimating whole communities. It is possible that the disease spread further through South Australia, so that many Aboriginal people only encountered Europeans after indirect effects of colonisation had caused major disruption to their lives. The distribution of Aboriginal people and land ownership usage patterns of the period prior to 1836 in southern South Australia had been completely disrupted by the turn of the century. In the meantime, South Australia followed most of the other states when it introduced amendments to the 1911 Act.
