The Wandandian, Wandiwandian, Wandi Wandi people, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the South Coast of New South Wales with connections to the Yuin and Tharawal nations. [1] . Their language is called Dharumba language (sometimes considered a dialect of both Dhurga and Dharawal).
The Wandandian lands extended over an estimated 1,400 square miles (3,600 km2) from Ulladulla to around Munna Munnora Creek or the Minnamurra River around Kiama. [2] To their south were the Walbunja. The tribes to their west were the Ngunawal and Walgalu. [3] Their connection with Wodi Wodi people to the north is debated discourse to this day, however a widely held understanding by many is that Wandandian and Wodi Wodi peoples are the same tribe (their Dharumba language is also mutually understood between Wandi Wandi and Wodi Wodi people and with Dharawal and Dhurga language speaking neighbours and kin understand the language too) and that the pronounciation is just depending on northern or southern tribal individuals who were noted as sharing information with interested missionaries, ethnographers, linguists or others during the 19th century and early decades of 20th century.
Norman Tindale cites a report by a Richard Dawsey reprinted in one of the early volumes edited by Edward Micklethwaite Curr, regarding the tribes from Jervis Bay to Mount Dromedary, as referring to the Wandandian. [4] According to this reference, the tribes divided themselves into two classes, the Piindri (tree climbers) and the Kathoongal (fishermen), and that according to their mythological lore the Earth had been once devastated and had to be repopulated by people from the Moon. [5]
Aboriginal union organiser for the Builders Labourers Federation Kevin "Cookie" Cook was a Yuin and Wandandian man. [1] [6]
The Jerrinja people are a contemporary clan of the Wandi Wandi/Wandiwandian people, direct descendants of the surviving Wandi Wandi tribal members during the nineteenth century.