The Wirangu are the traditional owners of a stretch of South Australia's west coast reaching from the Head of Bight to Ceduna and Streaky Bay, and inland towards Ooldea. Their language belongs to the Thura-Yura family of southern South Australia, and since 2004 Wirangu people have been working to revitalise it.
Country and neighbours
The anthropologist Norman Tindale reckoned Wirangu lands at about 21,500 square miles (roughly 55,700 square kilometres). They took in the coast from the Head of Bight past Cape Blanche to Streaky Bay, with a long arm reaching north into the interior towards Ooldea. The ethnographer R. H. Mathews and others regarded the Wirangu, the Barngarla and the Nauo as nearly one people in speech and custom. Neighbouring peoples knew them by many names: to the Barngarla they were "westerners", and to the Kokatha they were the "southerners" or the people of the sea coast. Daisy Bates recorded an explanation of the name itself as joining words for "cloud" and "speech".
Beliefs
Wirangu stories tie the land to the travels of ancestral beings. One published account, recorded by the anthropologist Ronald Berndt, tells of a great serpent pursued by two ancestral men from Ooldea to a granite waterhole to the south-east, where the ochre deposits of red, yellow and white are explained as traces left by the wounded snake.
Contact and conflict
Even before Europeans arrived, the Wirangu were being pushed from part of their territory by the movements of the Kokatha. British settlement of the Eyre Peninsula from 1839 brought violent clashes over land and stock, part of the wider Australian frontier wars. The Elliston district, home to Nauo, Kokatha and Wirangu people, was the setting of the events of May 1849 at Waterloo Bay. Official records list three Aboriginal deaths there, while later accounts spoke of up to 260 people driven over the cliffs; recent historians suggest the toll was probably in the tens or scores, and Aboriginal oral traditions hold that a large massacre took place.
Language and the present day
After 1898 the Koonibba Mission brought Wirangu speakers into close daily contact with Kokatha, and many Kokatha words entered the language. Wirangu became moribund over the twentieth century. A revitalisation programme began in Ceduna in 2004, drawing on recordings from the last two fully fluent speakers and supported by linguists at the University of Adelaide, who helped produce books for schools and the community. The Far West Languages Centre, founded in Ceduna in 2005, supports Wirangu alongside other endangered languages of the region, including Mirning.
On our maps
Our maps draw an approximate Wirangu territory in 1600, 1650, 1700, 1715, 1783, 1800 and 1815, beside the Kokatha, the Nauo and the Barngarla. Those years are snapshots only; Wirangu history on this coast is far older. See also Australia.
From the atlas
Wirangu on our maps
Borders of Time draws Wirangu on 7 of its 54 world maps, from 1600 CE to 1815 CE. Its largest extent is on the 1600 CE map, covering about 79,200 km² (30,600 sq mi), roughly the size of Ireland today.
On that map it borders the Australian aboriginal hunter-gatherers, Banggarla, Kokatha and Mirning.
On the map before it appears (1530 CE), the same area belongs to the Australian aboriginal hunter-gatherers. On the map after its last appearance (1878 CE), it belongs to South Australia (UK).
- 1600 CE79,200 km²
- 1650 CE79,200 km²
- 1700 CE79,200 km²
- 1715 CE79,200 km²
- 1783 CE79,200 km²
- 1800 CE79,200 km²
- 1815 CE62,300 km²
Measured from the historical-basemaps snapshots this atlas uses. Borders in those maps are approximate, especially for early periods.
Quick answers
- When did Wirangu exist?
- It appears on the atlas’s maps from 1600 to 1815.
- Where was Wirangu?
- At its largest, on the 1600 map, its land lies in today’s Australia (100%). On that map it borders the Australian aboriginal hunter-gatherers, Banggarla, Kokatha and Mirning.
- How big was Wirangu?
- Wirangu was largest on the 1600 map, at about 79,200 km² (30,600 sq mi).