Badtjalan

The Badtjala, more often called the Butchulla, are an Aboriginal Australian people of K'gari, the great sand island off south-eastern Queensland, and the adjoining mainland around Hervey Bay and the lower Mary River.

The island's rich fishing grounds supported one of Australia's densest Aboriginal populations, organised into three units, the Ngulungbara of the north, the Butchulla of the centre and the Dulingbara of the south, divided into nineteen clan groups. They spoke Badjala, a dialect of Gubbi Gubbi within the Pama-Nyungan family, and their name has been read as meaning sea folk.

In July 1802 Matthew Flinders became the first European to land on K'gari, meeting Ngulungbara people at Sandy Cape. In 1836 survivors of the wrecked Stirling Castle came ashore, and the captain's widow, Eliza Fraser, lived among the islanders for several weeks.