There is some doubt about the status of the language, now extinct, of the Ngaro people. It may have been the same as the Wiri language or Giya language (both dialects of Biri), or a separate dialect.[3]
Country
According to Norman Tindale, Ngaro territory amounted to some 520 square kilometres (200sqmi), from Whitsunday and Cumberland islands, ranging over Cumberland Islands and including the coastal mainland areas around Cape Conway. Their inland extension reached as far as the mountains to the east of Proserpine.[4] Tindale's mapping was influential but is contested by descendants of several related groups in the area.[5][lower-alpha 1][2]South Molle Island was an important quarry for materials used in stone manufacture, and Nara Inlet on Hook Island affords archaeologists insights into the earliest Ngaro habitation in this area.
The Gia people and language have also been assigned Ngaro as a synonym, and vice versa, but it appears that the Gia lived on the mainland.
Whitsunday Island formed the centre of Ngaro life, furnishing the only permanent area of habitation.[8] The Ngaro were noted for their distinctive sewn three-piece canoes, crafted from ironbark and known as winta. Despite assertions, notably by Alfred Cort Haddon, that outrigger technology never reached further down the east Queensland coast that 300miles north of Whitsunday Islands,[lower-alpha 2] the entries in Captain James Cook's Endeavour journals prove that by 1770, the first contact date with Europeans, outriggers were already employed in this area.[9] On these the Ngaro made their journeys and fishing expeditions, sailing not only about the islands in their immediate area but covering an estimated 100kilometres in and along the reefs, including those between St.Bees and Hayman Island, reefs which they knew intimately.[4][8] Ngaro oral accounts are consistent throughout the historical record in their description of seasonal visits to the Great Barrier Reef, 43miles from the mainland and 25miles from the nearest island, in their canoes.[10]
Their diet consisted of sea turtles, flying foxes, fowls, wild cherries, Burdekin plum, damson berries, trochus shells, baler shells, green ant and cockatoo apples.[8] They also hunted large sea mammals such as small whales from these canoes. This was only possible due to their development of barbed harpoon technology that enabled the Ngaro to kill their prey by exhausting them rather than bleeding them to death, which would attract sharks to compete for the catch.
The Ngaro traded with the mainland, and their artifacts such as baler shells for carrying water, and juan knives fashioned from rock at South Molle, which had one of the largest of such pre-European quarries in Australia, found their way a good distance inland and far up the coast.[11][1]
Rock art
The earliest archaeological evidence for habitation in the area has been found at Nara Inlet on Hook Island.[12] Cave openings and nearby mounds, or middens, of oyster-like shells are still visible in the steep slopes of Nara Inlet.
The painting of a hashed oval shape is often presumed to be a sea turtle shell, a prominent food source for the Ngaro and Aboriginal people of the mainland. However, it may represent the fruit of the pandanus plant and its seed.[citation needed]
History of contact
Early settler accounts suggest that the Ngaro population consisted of about 100 people, which represents an island population density of roughly one person per 98 hectares (240 acres). They may have been decimated through early contacts by disease, but this figure still represents a comparatively high figure.[8] Derrick Stone writes of their fate as white colonisation penetrated their area:
Warfare, colonist expansion, disease and the Native Police Corps made their existence tenuous but the Aborigines' final downfall came in 1870 when they were forcibly relocated to a mission settlement on Palm Island and others to Brampton Island to work in timber mills.[13]
Memories of old songs sung in a mixture of Ngaro and Biri are still recalled by descendants.[14]
Barker, Bryce (1995). The Sea People: Maritime Hunter-gatherers on the Tropical Coast: a Late Holocene Maritime Specialisation in the Whitsunday Islands, Central Queensland. Pandanus Books.
Bridgeman, George F.; Bucas, Revd H. (1887). "Port Mackay and its Neighbourhood"(PDF). In Curr, Edward Micklethwaite (ed.). The Australian race: its origin, languages, customs, place of landing in Australia and the routes by which it spread itself over the continent. Vol.3. Melbourne: J. Ferres. pp.44–51.
Lizard Island, also known as Jiigurru or Dyiigurra, is an island on the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia, 1,624-kilometre (1,009 mi) northwest of Brisbane. It is part of the Lizard Island Group that also includes Palfrey Island, and also part of the Lizard Island National Park. Lizard Island is within the locality of Lizard in the Cook Shire. The traditional owners of the Lizard Island group are the Aboriginal Australian clan known as the Dingaal people.
The Whitsunday Islands are 74 continental islands of various sizes off the central coast of Queensland, Australia, 900 kilometres north of Brisbane. The northernmost of the islands are off the coast by the town of Bowen, while the southernmost islands are off the coast by Proserpine. The island group is centred on Whitsunday Island, while the commercial centre is Hamilton Island. The traditional owners of the area are the Ngaro people and the Gia people, whose Juru people has the only legally recognised native title in the Whitsunday Region.
Whitsunday Island is the largest island in the Whitsunday group of islands located off the coast of Central Queensland, Australia.
Hook Island is one of the Whitsunday Islands off the coast of the Australian state of Queensland. The island is almost uninhabited, quite rugged and almost completely contained within a section of the Whitsunday Islands National Park. The island has two prominent geographical features on the southern side of Hook Island; the Nara and Macona inlets, two fjord-like recesses that are used as anchorages for the Whitsunday tourist fleet. The island's northern coast is noted for its colourful underwater coral growths, to which snorkelling and diving enthusiasts are attracted.
Lindeman Island is an island in the Lindeman Group of the Whitsunday Islands off the coast of Queensland, Australia. The island was named by Captain Bedwell after his sub-lieutenant, George Sidney Lindeman whilst aboard the Royal Navy vessel HMS Virago.
The Manbarra, otherwise known as the Wulgurukaba, are Aboriginal Australian people, and the traditional custodians of the Palm Islands, Magnetic Island, and an area of mainland Queensland to the west of Townsville.
Biri, also known as Biria, Birri Gubba, Birigaba, Wiri, Perembba and other variants, is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Mackay area of Queensland spoken by the Birri Gubba people. There are at least eight languages regarded as dialects of Biri, and two which are related but whose status is not yet fully determined. All are covered in this article.
Harry Lourandos is an Australian archaeologist, adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology, Archaeology and Sociology, School of Arts and Social Sciences at James Cook University, Cairns. He is a leading proponent of the theory that a period of hunter-gatherer intensification occurred between 3000 and 1000 BCE.
The Proserpine River is a river in Whitsunday Region of Queensland, Australia.
The Yuwibara, also written Yuibera and Juipera and also known as Yuwi, after their language, are an Aboriginal Australian people, originating from the area around present-day Mackay, on the east coast of Queensland, Australia.
The Kaiadilt are an Aboriginal Australian people of the South Wellesley group in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland, Australia. They are native to Bentinck Island, but also made nomadic fishing and hunting forays to both Sweers and Allen Islands. Most Kaiadilt people now live on Mornington Island.
The Uutaalnganu people, also known as Night Island Kawadji, are an Aboriginal Australian group of Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland. The name is also used collectively for several peoples in this area, such as the Pontunj / Jangkonj (Yanganyu), whose language is unconfirmed.
The Gabulbarra people, also rendered Gabalbura, Gabalbara and Kabalbara, were an Aboriginal Australian people of an area in eastern Central Queensland, but there is little recorded information about them.
The Baranha or Barna, also known as Barada Barna, are an Australian Aboriginal people of northern Queensland.
The Gia people, also known as Giya, Kia, Bumbarra, and variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Queensland. Little is known of them.
The Wiri are an Aboriginal Australian people of an area on the eastern side of the state of Queensland. They speak a dialect of the Biri language called Wiri.
The Koinmerburra people, also known as Koinjmal, Guwinmal, Kungmal and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the state of Queensland. They are the traditional owners of an area which includes part of the Great Barrier Reef.
The Dingaal people, also known as Walmbarddha or Walmbaria, are an Aboriginal Australian people of Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland.
The Baradha people, also spelt Barada and Thar ar ra burra, and also known as Toolginburra, were an Aboriginal Australian people of Central Queensland not far inland from the east coast.
The Juru people, also known as Yuru, are a group of Aboriginal people of the state of Queensland, Australia.
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