RECORDING TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE O r ... - Wheatbelt NRM

ABORIGINAL HISTORY IN THE AVON RIVER BASIN
Noongar People
(*Note: there are several ways of spelling the word Noongar. This version refers to the people
of the Ballardong Noongar Region of southwest WA.
Budjar
N
oongar budjar (country or land) lies in the south-western corner of Western
Australia. It extends eastward of Esperance (Wudjari) moving in an arc to the
north-west close to the small wheat-belt town of Nyoongah (Njakinjaki), and
west-north-west towards Cooroow (Juat), and south of Geraldton across to the west coast
of Western Australia. These are the general boundaries of the budjar or country where all
Noongar moort have budjar or geographical land and moort or family regional affiliations.
Noongar, or the people, encompass twelve different dialect groups here and the budjar is
divided into corresponding territories as previously mentioned (Tindale 1974). The
language groups are Ballardong, Goreng, Wiilman, Wudjari, Wardandi, Kaniyang,
Bibbulmun, Wajuk and Nyaki-Nyaki, Yuat, Pinjarup and Minang.
Each Noongar language group had access to different ecological habitats in accordance with
a long tradition of territorial occupation. (CALM, 2000).
Within the Avon River Basin Noongar budjar share boundaries with Wongi, which is the
generic name of the Aboriginal people from the Eastern Goldfields region of Western
Australia, and Yamatji, which is the generic name of the Aboriginal people in the Murchison
and Gascoyne areas of the mid-west of this state, (Collard 1996; van den Berg 1994;
Brewster et al. 2000).
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