Geawegali

The Geawegal are an Aboriginal people of the Hunter Valley in New South Wales. Their name is usually read as ‘the no-sayers’, from geawe, their word for ‘no’, plus the belonging suffix -gal. Their country is disputed: one early account places them on the Hunter around Glendon, while Norman Tindale assigned them some 8,500 square kilometres further north-west, taking in Muswellbrook and Scone.

Their speech, recorded in only a few words, has been linked to Gamilaraay and the coastal Hunter River languages. They intermarried with the people of Maitland and the Paterson River but dreaded Gamilaraay raids. They kept sacred heralds who might pass freely even among hostile tribes, and a slain enemy's hand might be carried as a trophy.

The French explorer François Péron published the first European account of them in 1807, and as convict stations and farms spread up the valley in the following decades the tribe dwindled rapidly.