Wajarri

Inland from Geraldton, across the Murchison and upper Gascoyne country of Western Australia, live the Wajarri, an Aboriginal Australian people whose name is also written Wadjari or Watjarri. Many Wajarri also call themselves Yamaji, from their word for "man". Their country now hosts a major international radio astronomy site, which bears a Wajarri name.

Norman Tindale estimated Wajarri lands at about 35,000 square miles (roughly 90,000 square kilometres). In the north they reached the hills at the head of the Lyons River and the upper Gascoyne; the western edge lay around Byro and Dalgety Downs; and in the south they extended to the Roderick and upper Sanford rivers. Linguists describe Wajarri country as running from around Mullewa in the south-west to Gascoyne Junction in the north and Meekatharra in the east.

Wajarri belongs to the Kartu group, part of the Pama–Nyungan family, and is classed as endangered. Sketch grammars were written in 1981 and 1996, and the Yamaji Language Centre produced an illustrated wordlist and other materials through the 1990s. Since July 2005 a Geraldton language programme has published a printed dictionary and a dictionary app, worked with schools and held community classes. In 2008 Wajarri reportedly became the first Aboriginal language offered at senior secondary level in Western Australia. The word yamaji can mean a Wajarri person or, more broadly, Aboriginal people of the Murchison–Gascoyne region.

In 2009 the national science agency CSIRO established the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory near Boolardy Station, about 800 kilometres north of Perth, on Wajarri land. Beside it is the small community of Pia Wajarri. The site lies inside a radio quiet zone, declared in 2005 and strengthened in 2011, where radio transmitters and mobile phones are restricted; Wajarri people can still move freely across the land provided they respect the radio silence.

For several years before 2020, CSIRO and the federal government negotiated with about 15 Wajarri traditional owners, representing different groups, towards an Indigenous land use agreement. The talks covered how to protect culturally important places while building large telescope arrays, and how the remote community could benefit. Heritage surveys were carried out, though the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the work.

In 2022 the observatory was enlarged to 27 times its original size to host the low-frequency telescope of the international Square Kilometre Array, and it was given the Wajarri name Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, meaning "sharing sky and stars". Construction of the main telescope began with a ceremony on 5 December 2022.

Our maps draw approximate Watjarri territory in 1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783, 1800 and 1815, surrounded by Gascoyne and Murchison peoples such as the Yinggarda and Badimaya; the Wangkatha lie to the south-east, and the Western Desert homelands of the Martu further to the north-east. See also Australia.