tjilbruke (also tjirbruki) is an important creation ancestor for the kaurna people of the adelaide plains in the australian state of south australia. the lore tells of a time when all the people lived in accord with peaceful trading laws which governed all the people's lives. the law was brought to the land, and 'old tjirbruki', who lived as an ordinary man, a keeper of the law which came from the south, after the water covered the land. tjirbruki's dearly loved nephew was killed, for breaking the law and killing a female emu; he came and carried the body of his nephew down the east coast of gulf st vincent, after his nephew was killed while hunting. the path tjilbruke took along the coast is wrongly referred to as "tjilbruke's trail". it should be referred to as the tjirbruki dreaming tracks, and is a journey into the hunter gatherer people's past, and the long history of the land. this songline pre-exists european contact and is part of the oral history of indigenous australians.