Wiradjuri

The Wiradjuri, the biggest Aboriginal nation of New South Wales, are a people of the inland plains west of the Blue Mountains bound together by kinship and shared traditions. Their homeland, called the land of the three rivers, follows the Macquarie, the Lachlan and the Murrumbidgee. They fought British settlers in the Bathurst War of 1824, and today their communities are spread across central New South Wales, where their language is being brought back into use.

The anthropologist Norman Tindale estimated Wiradjuri lands at about 127,000 square kilometres. They ran from above Mudgee in the north, along the foothills of the Blue Mountains and the western slopes, south to Albury on the upper Murray, and west along Billabong Creek and south-west to around Hay and Narrandera, taking in places such as Bathurst, Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, Cowra and Condobolin. The three rivers have Wiradjuri names: Wambuul for the Macquarie, Kalare for the Lachlan, and Murrumbidjeri for the Murrumbidgee.

Colonial writers explained the name as coming from wiray, "no", with a suffix meaning "having", identifying the people by their word for "no", as several neighbouring groups were named. Tindale criticised many of the large tribal names invented in the 1890s but accepted Wiradjuri as one of the largest real groupings in Australia, made up of many local bands. More than 60 spellings of the name have been recorded.

The Wiradjuri lived as skilled hunters, fishers and gatherers in family groups and clans. They took Murray cod and yabbies from the rivers, hunted kangaroos and emus, and gathered fruit, nuts, wattle seed, orchid tubers and yam daisies; in summer they travelled into the high country to feast on bogong moths. They were known for cloaks of possum skins stitched together, one of which was presented to Governor Macquarie at Bathurst in 1815. Together with their Gamilaraay neighbours, they carved trees with designs to mark the graves of important people.

British colonists first crossed the Blue Mountains into Wiradjuri country in 1813, and Bathurst was founded soon after. Settlement was slow at first, but after Governor Thomas Brisbane took office in 1821 a flood of land grants put heavy pressure on Wiradjuri food sources and sacred places. From 1822 Wiradjuri warriors raided stations, and in early 1824, after a settler shot several Wiradjuri people in a dispute over potatoes, the leader Windradyne and his warriors struck back. Settler reprisals followed, and historians note that most Wiradjuri killed in the conflict were non-combatants, shot by mounted patrols or poisoned. On 14 August 1824 Brisbane declared martial law, and troops of the 40th Regiment and settler militia swept the district. By late 1824 many Wiradjuri had surrendered; martial law ended on 11 December, and later that month Windradyne led his people to the governor's annual feast at Parramatta, where he received a pardon. The conflict forms part of the wider Australian frontier wars.

Wiradjuri belongs to the Pama–Nyungan family. It had fallen out of everyday use, but it is being reclaimed from old wordlists, ethnographic records and the memories of Wiradjuri families. A First Wiradjuri Dictionary was published in 2005 and expanded in 2010 to more than 8,000 words. The language is taught in schools in towns such as Parkes, Forbes, Condobolin, Dubbo and Wellington, at TAFE colleges, and since 2014 through a course at Charles Sturt University. The English word quandong is thought to come from a Wiradjuri name for the native peach.

Large Wiradjuri communities live at Condobolin, Peak Hill, Narrandera and Griffith, with sizeable communities in Wagga Wagga and Leeton and smaller ones in many other towns, and many still use hunting and gathering knowledge as part of customary life. Wiradjuri people have become prominent in Australian politics, sport, literature and scholarship.

Our maps from 1600 to 1800 draw an approximate Wiradjuri territory across central New South Wales in Australia. Neighbours include the Gamilaraay (labelled Kamilaroi) to the north, the Gundungurra and Ngunawal to the east, and the Yorta Yorta and Nari Nari to the south and west.