City Connector: Kaurna artwork

The City Connector Bus has been wrapped in artwork illustrating some of Adelaide’s significant traditional and contemporary meeting places for the Kaurna people

The Kaurna people are the Traditional Owners of the Adelaide plains in South Australia.

The artwork design is a generalised map of the city of Adelaide and is also an expression of how the city’s landscape is viewed by many Kaurna people of today.  

Featured in the artwork are some the city of Adelaide’s traditional and contemporary significant sites where people meet like Victoria Square/Tarntanyangga which is known by many as ‘the heart of the city’ and is shaped similarly to the Kaurna shield. The four smaller city squares are also featured in the artwork.

Other sites depicted in the artwork include:

• The Adelaide Festival Centre/Tarnda Kanya
• The Adelaide Oval/Tarntanya Wama which was a Kaurna camp ground
• Victoria Park/Pakapakanthi which was used as a camp by western desert Aboriginal people when visiting,
• The waterholes in the Botanic Gardens of South Australia
• The Native School, Pirltawardli near the weir
• The waterhole in Bonython Park/Tulya Wardli

The yellow sun can be seen rising above the saddle of Mount Lofty and Mount Bonython, with fires in the foothills above an old Kaurna camp ground which now sits within the suburb of Burnside. Paitya the Brown Snake and Yura the Water Monster can be found lurking amongst the stars of the Milky Way which are reflected on the water’s surface of the River Torrens/Karrawirra Pari. 

Along the edges of the river are eucalyptus trees. The banks are covered in the kikuyu grass of the Adelaide Park Lands, with reminders of the swathes of kangaroo grass that once grew in abundance.

Kangaroo, emu and ibis leave their footprints as they meander about looking for food across landscape that is now the CBD of Adelaide. 

The full blue moon with its halo can be seen above the Park Lands, while the ancestral spirits of traditional Kaurna people are gathering in numbers for ceremony on the banks of the River Torrens/Karrawirra Pari.

About the artist:

The artwork on this bus was designed by Aboriginal artist Paul Herzich, a descendant of the Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna people of South Australia.