Bidwelli

The Bidwelli are the Bidawal, an Aboriginal people of East Gippsland whose hard country of sclerophyll woodland and rainforest, some seven thousand square kilometres, straddled the modern border of New South Wales and Victoria, running from Green Cape and Point Hicks inland to the Cann River headwaters.

Their name means scrub dwellers in the tongues of neighbouring peoples, and the ethnographer Alfred Howitt thought the tribe grew from fugitives fleeing tribal justice among neighbouring groups, who found refuge in land others shunned.

In 1337 they lived in small bands on the few open tracts, hunting wallaby and gathering where they could, and brought boys to manhood through the Dyerrayal initiation. Their speech, called Muk-dhang, was close to the Kurnai dialects, though the Krauatungalung dubbed it rough speech.