The first Europeans to visit were the expedition of Charles Sturt, who passed by in a rowboat in 1830. The first Europeans to visit overland, by horseback, in March 1838, was the expedition of Hill, Oakden, Willis, and Wood. They noted a large Indigenous population. The locality was originally known to Europeans as the North West Bend, or Nor'west Bend, or Great South Bend, due to an acute change in the trend and direction of the Murray. The westward flowing stream of the river turns here to flow southward. The nearby pioneering pastoral station, Northwest Bend Station, established in the 1840s, still bears that name.