The first recording by white Australians of a community at Kaltjiti was by explorer Ernest Giles. He wrote that he found 200 male Aborigines there in September 1873, during his second trip into the South Australian desert. The meeting was violent, as Giles and his travellers interrupted a sacred ceremony. The first European settlement near Kaltjiti was set up in 1934. It was established by a dogger (dingo hunter), who was given the rights to the nearby bore (called Shirley Well) by the government as a reward for all the dingos he had killed. By the late 1950s, Aboriginal families were camped at Shirley Well permanently. In 1960, the station at Ernabella was expanded to include Shirley Well.