Wergaia is an Indigenous Australian language group in the Wimmera

Wimmera

The Wimmera is a region in the west of the Australian state of Victoria.It covers the dryland farming area south of the range of Mallee scrub, east of the South Australia border and north of the Great Dividing Range...

 region of north-Western Victoria

Victoria (Australia)

Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....

. 20 clans made up the Wergaia language group which consisted of four distinct dialects: Wudjubalug/Wotjobaluk; Djadjala/Djadjali; Buibadjali; Biwadjali. The people were known as the Maligundidj, which means the people of the Mallee country, referring to the mallee

Mallee (habit)

Mallee is the growth habit of certain eucalypt species that grow with multiple stems springing from an underground lignotuber, usually to a height of no more than ten metres...

 eucalypt bushland which covers much of their territory.

Before European settlement in the nineteenth century, the Wergaia occupied the area that included Lake Hindmarsh

Lake Hindmarsh

Lake Hindmarsh in western Victoria is the state’s largest natural freshwater lake. The nearest towns are Jeparit to the south and Rainbow to the north.The lake has filled after more than a decade of drought, due to floods in early 2011.-History:...

, Lake Albacutya

Lake Albacutya

Lake Albacutya is in Victoria, Australia. The postcode there is 3424. It has been designated a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention....

, Pine Plains Lake, Lake Werringrin, Lake Corong, Warracknabeal, Hopetoun

Hopetoun, Victoria

Hopetoun is a town which serves as the major service centre for the Southern Mallee area of Victoria, Australia. Hopetoun is situated 400 kilometres north-west of Melbourne on the Henty Highway in the Shire of Yarriambiack...

, Dimboola

Dimboola, Victoria

Dimboola is located in Shire of Hindmarsh in the Wimmera region of Western Victoria, Australia, 334 kilometres north-west of Melbourne.Situated on the Wimmera River in the State of Victoria,the town of Dimboola was previously known as 'Nine Creeks'.Following a survey conducted in late 1862 by...

, Ouyen, Yanac, Hattah Lakes

Hattah-Kulkyne National Park

Hattah-Kulkyne is a national park in Victoria, Australia, 417 km northwest of Melbourne. The nearest regional centre is Mildura. It is a popular destination for bushwalkers and school camping trips.-Description:...

 and the Wimmera River

Wimmera River

The Wimmera River is a river in Western Victoria, Australia. It begins in the Pyrenees, and flows into Lake Hindmarsh and Lake Albacutya, although in many years flows do not reach these terminal lakes and the river contracts to a series of pools of varying sizes...

.

Society

The Maligundidj people were divided into 20 clans each with their particular territory. They were a matrilineal society divided into two moeties: gabadj (black cockatoo) and grugidj (white cockatoo). Intermarriage occurred often with the Jardwadjali

Jardwadjali

The Jardwadjali people are Indigenous Australians who occupy the lands in the upper Wimmera River watershed east to Gariwerd and west to Lake Bringalbert. The towns of Horsham, Cavendish, Coleraine, Asply, Minyip and Donald are within their territory...

 and Dja Dja Wurrung

Dja Dja Wurrung

Dja Dja Wurrung, also known as the Jaara people and Loddon River tribe, is a native Aboriginal tribe which occupied the watersheds of the Loddon and Avoca Rivers in the Bendigo region of central Victoria, Australia. They were part of the Kulin alliance of tribes. There were 16 clans, which adhered...

 peoples, and meetings and ceremonies were attended with the Dadidadi, Wadiwadi, and Ladjiladji peoples to their north.

The clans that spoke Wergaia have lived in the area for up to 30,000 to 40,000 years. There is evidence of occupation in Gariwerd many thousands of years before the last ice-age. One site in the Victoria Range (Billawin Range) has been dated from 22,000 years ago.

The Wergaia had a sophisticated knowledge of astronomy

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

 and connected the rising and setting of particular stars with seasonal events and dreamtime

Dreamtime

In the animist framework of Australian Aboriginal mythology, The Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings formed The Creation.-The Dreaming of the Aboriginal times:...

 mythology.

One dreamtime story of the Wotjobaluk people is of Gnowee

Gnowee

In the mythology of the Aboriginal people of south-eastern Australia , Gnowee is a solar goddess whose torch is the Sun. She was once a woman who lived upon the earth at a time when it was eternally dark, and people could only move about with the aid of bark torches...

, the solar goddess, and how she came to wander the sky lighting the whole world.

European Contact and History

It is likely that first contact with Europeans was through smallpox epidemics which arrived with the First Fleet in 1788 and rapidly spread through the trading networks of indigenous Australians and killed many people in two waves before the 1830s. One Wotjobaluk account called the disease thinba micka and that it killed large numbers of people, and dis-figured many more with pock marked faces, and came down the Murray River sent by malevolent sorcerers to the north.

The explorer Edward John Eyre

Edward John Eyre

Edward John Eyre was an English land explorer of the Australian continent, colonial administrator, and a controversial Governor of Jamaica....

 was possibly the first European seen by the Maligundidj when he followed the Wimmera River

Wimmera River

The Wimmera River is a river in Western Victoria, Australia. It begins in the Pyrenees, and flows into Lake Hindmarsh and Lake Albacutya, although in many years flows do not reach these terminal lakes and the river contracts to a series of pools of varying sizes...

 to Lake Hindmarsh

Lake Hindmarsh

Lake Hindmarsh in western Victoria is the state’s largest natural freshwater lake. The nearest towns are Jeparit to the south and Rainbow to the north.The lake has filled after more than a decade of drought, due to floods in early 2011.-History:...

 in 1838. His reports of the mallee country spurred a rush of settlers with their cattle and sheep eager to establish pastoral stations.

With the encroachment of European settlers from 1840 eager to run cattle and sheep conflict in Wergaia country was inevitable. The first 10 years of European settlement in the area was met with considerable resistance by the Maligundidj.

Horatio Cockburn Ellerman, an early settler, participated in several raids on aboriginal camps:

"The Wotjobaluk singled him out early for his ruthlessness. In 1844, learning that one had threatened to kill him, Ellerman obtained a warrant and, with members of the Border Police, hunted down the man. The party shot and killed him and another Wotjobaluk, presumably claiming self-defence. The raid that killed Willie's mother would not have been the first such raid in which Ellerman had taken part. William Taylor, another adventurer, mentioned that Ellerman, and others who would later move to the Lake Hindmarsh area, took part in a punitive expedition in the Southern Wimmera in 1844."

The boy, William Wimmera, whose mother was shot in 1846, was taken in by Ellerman. On a trip taking wool to Melbourne in 1850 the boy became lost. He was taken in by Lloyd Chase and later taken to England to be educated, While in England he contracted a lung disease and died on 10 March 1852. Just before his death he asked to be baptised in the Christian faith. A sixteen page account of his life was published which focused on his religious redemption.

Dick-a-Dick

Dick-a-Dick

Dick-a-Dick was an Australian Aboriginal tracker and cricketer, a Wotjobaluk man of the people who spoke the Wergaia language in the Wimmera region of western Victoria, Australia...

 was a Wotjobaluk tracker responsible for finding the three Duff children lost in the Australian bush for 9 days in 1864 which garnered national and even international attention. Dick-a-Dick was one of the Wotjobaluk and Jardwadjali

Jardwadjali

The Jardwadjali people are Indigenous Australians who occupy the lands in the upper Wimmera River watershed east to Gariwerd and west to Lake Bringalbert. The towns of Horsham, Cavendish, Coleraine, Asply, Minyip and Donald are within their territory...

 men who formed the basis for the Australian Aboriginal cricket team in England in 1868.

In 1981 or early 1982 the aboriginal community met in Horsham

Horsham

Horsham is a market town with a population of 55,657 on the upper reaches of the River Arun in the centre of the Weald, West Sussex, in the historic County of Sussex, England. The town is south south-west of London, north-west of Brighton and north-east of the county town of Chichester...

 and applied for registration as the Goolum Goolum Aboriginal Cooperative. According to Clark, Goolum goolum is a Wergaia word meaning 'stranger, especially a dangerous stranger, wild blackfellow.

Ebenezer Mission

Ebenezer Mission

Ebenezer Mission

Ebenezer Mission station was established near Lake Hindmarsh, Victoria, Australia in 1859 by the Moravian Church on the land of the Wotjobaluk. The first missionaries were two Germans, Reverend Friedrich Hagenauer and Reverend F.W. Spieseke. In 1861 the Victorian Colonial Government gazetted as a...

 was established in 1859 in Wergaia country at a site called Banji bunag, near the site of the killing of Willie's mother which was a traditional meeting place and corroboree

Corroboree

A corroboree is a ceremonial meeting of Australian Aborigines. The word was coined by the European settlers of Australia in imitation of the Aboriginal word caribberie. At a corroboree Aborigines interact with the Dreamtime through dance, music and costume. Many ceremonies act out events from the...

 ground. The site was chosen with the assistance of Ellerman.

In 1902 the State Government of Victoria decided to close the Ebenezer Mission due to low numbers. The mission closed in 1904, and most of the land was handed back to the Victorian Lands Department and made available for selection. In the following twenty years many Wergaia people were forcibly moved to Lake Tyers in Gippsland under police escort, along with closure of all rations to Ebenezer Mission and seizure of children. Despite these measures, some Wergaia families avoided relocation and remained on their ancestral lands.

Native Title recognition

The indigenous peoples of the Wimmera

Wimmera

The Wimmera is a region in the west of the Australian state of Victoria.It covers the dryland farming area south of the range of Mallee scrub, east of the South Australia border and north of the Great Dividing Range...

 won native title recognition on 13 December 2005 after a ten year legal process. It was the first successful native title claim in south-eastern Australia and in Victoria, determined by Justice Ron Merkel involving Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jadawadjali, Wergaia and Jupagalk people. In his reasons for judgement Justice Merkel made special mention of Wotjobaluk elder Uncle Jack Kennedy

William John Kennedy

William John Kennedy, better known as Uncle Jack Kennedy, was a lifelong activist for the rights of Australian Aborigines, a Wotjobaluk clan elder of the people who spoke the Wergaia language in the Wimmera region of western Victoria, Australia...

and explained the significance of his orders:

"The orders I propose to make are of special significance as they constitute the first recognition and protection of native title resulting in the ongoing enjoyment of native title in the State of Victoria and, it would appear, on the South-Eastern seaboard of Australia. These are areas in which the Aboriginal peoples suffered severe and extensive dispossession, degradation and devastation as a consequence of the establishment of British sovereignty over their lands and waters during the 19th century."