The Aboriginal Australians living in the area when Europeans arrived were the Bindjali people,[8][9] The word coonawarra is reported to have been their word for honeysuckle,[10] although this meaning has also been ascribed to Penola by the same source.[9] An alternative origin to the name is still rooted in the local indigenous language: “The name of John Riddock’s fruit colony, started by him in 1895. “Coon” being the aboriginal word for “big lip”, and “warra,” for “house,” and was applied by natives to a house in the locality in which a man with a remarkably big lip lived”[11]
Coonawarra was a station on the Mount Gambier railway line, which opened in 1887 and operated until it closed to freight on 12 April 1995. The Limestone Coast Railway tourist trains stopped at the station from Mount Gambier until 20 March 1999.[citation needed]
^Day, Alfred N (1915). Names of South Australian Railway Stations with Their Meanings and Derivations. Adelaide: South Australian Railways [R E E Rogers, Government Printer]. p. 8.
^"Wynn's Coonawarra Winery". South Australian Heritage Register. Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources. Retrieved 26 August 2016.