Gumbaynggirri

The Gumbaynggirr are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, their country stretching from the Clarence River near Yamba to the Macleay River around Stuarts Point and inland to Guyra. Clans such as the Gumbathagang, Nimboy and Orara made up the nation, and their language, Gumbaynggir, forms one of the two Gumbaynggiric branches of the Pama-Nyungan family.

The shore supported dense foraging, and the shell middens there include the largest shell deposit of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. In Dreaming traditions the white fig, muurrbay, holds a central place, and they made bush sweets by rolling tender acacia shoots in its sap. Shielded by rivers and forest, they remained beyond the colonial frontier through 1837.