Bidjara (Warrego River)

The Bidjara, also written Bidyara or Pitjara, are Aboriginal Australians from eastern Queensland, whose country takes in the upper Warrego and Nogoa rivers. They should not be confused with the Bidjara of the Bulloo River in south-western Queensland, or with the Badjiri of southern Queensland. Older records also spell the name Bidjera and Peechera.

The anthropologist Norman Tindale, who tried to map tribal boundaries as they stood at European contact, estimated Bidjara lands at about 16,600 square kilometres. He placed them at the headwaters of the Nogoa and Warrego, reaching south to Caroline and north of Augathella, north to Mantuan Downs, east to Killarney and Chesterton, and west to the Nive River. He described well-wooded country whose eastern edge is marked by sheer cliffs. Language maps today associate Bidjara with the area around Charleville, Augathella and Blackall.

Tindale suggested that, before British settlement, an eastward movement of other peoples south of Charleville may have pushed the Bidjara and the Badjiri apart, after which they developed as separate groups. The ranges of Carnarvon National Park, with their rock-art galleries, burial places and old camp sites, are significant to the Bidjara as well as to the Karingbal and Kara Kara peoples. Kenniff Cave in the park was the first Australian site to give radiocarbon dates showing human occupation back to the Late Pleistocene, around 19,500 years ago. In the Carnarvon area, settlers followed Thomas Mitchell's expedition of the 1840s, and conflict between them and local Aboriginal groups lasted until the 1870s.

Bidjara belongs to the Maric group of Pama–Nyungan languages and its name is also used for a wider group of related dialects, such as Gunggari and Gayiri. In 1980 it was spoken by about 20 elders between Tambo and Augathella, and the 2016 census recorded 22 speakers. The name of the Warrego River is thought to come from a Bidjara word meaning "bad". Revival efforts are under way, and Bidjara people have spoken publicly about the loss of the language and their wish to restore it.

The maps label this territory "Bidjara" and draw it from 1600 to 1800, an approximate outline among the other Aboriginal Australian peoples of what is now Australia. On the 1815 map the area is shown within New South Wales.