 Initially this settlement was low key pastoral activity and allowed the Aboriginal people to largely continue their traditional way of living.However, during the 1870s and early 1880s extensive programs of fencing, buildings and dam construction took place as the first phase of European permanent settlement occurred.In 1894 Willandra passed into the ownership of the London Bank of Melbourne, after the entrepreneurial empire of its previous owners, the Whittingham Brothers, collapsed in the 1890s depression.