Ganggalidan

The Ganggalidan take their name from the Ganggalidda, or Yukulta, an Aboriginal people of the southern Gulf of Carpentaria coast of Queensland, whose tongue belongs to the Tangkic language family; tangka means person in every language of the group.

The same family links the mainlanders to the peoples of the Wellesley Islands: the Lardil of Mornington Island and the Kaiadilt of Bentinck Island, speaking Kayardild, their related tongues largely mutually intelligible. Island life turned on the sea: the Lardil built stone-walled fish traps across tidal shallows and taught Damin, a secret initiation language of about two hundred words with rare click and ingressive sounds, to boys entering the second degree of manhood.

In the seventeenth century Macassan trepangers sailed as far as Mornington Island, and in 1644 Abel Tasman sighted the group and named its eastern cape Cape Van Diemen.