Gulidjani

The Gulidjan, also called the Kolakngat or Colac tribe, are an Aboriginal people of the volcanic lake plains of western Victoria, holding the country around Lake Colac between Lake Corangamite and the Barwon River, north of the Otway Ranges.

Their language was a distinct tongue, perhaps mixed from several neighbouring speeches, of which only about a hundred words survive; their name is said to mean belonging to sand, from their word kulak. Grasslands and lakes supplied game, tubers, eels and waterfowl.

Colonisation reached them almost immediately after Melbourne was founded: the squatter Hugh Murray occupied their country in 1837, and when the explorers Gellibrand and Hesse disappeared the same year, the blame was put on the Gulidjan and a punitive party killed several of them. They resisted for years by driving off livestock and raiding stations until dispossession forced them onto the Europeans' runs.