Guugu-Yimidhirri

The Guugu-Yimidhirri are an Aboriginal Australian people of Far North Queensland, whose traditional lands ran from the Endeavour River near Cooktown north to the Jeannie River and south to the Annan River. Coastal clans, who called themselves saltwater people, and inland clans lived by fishing, hunting and gathering.

Their Pama-Nyungan language had dialects later distinguished as the coastal dhalundhirr and the inland waguurrga. In 1770 James Cook beached the damaged Endeavour at the Endeavour River for seven weeks of repairs, and his crew became the first Europeans to record an Australian language.

They recorded gangurru, a word for a large kangaroo, which entered English as kangaroo, while the artist Sydney Parkinson kept a word list and sketches of the local people. A quarrel over turtles ended in a grass fire and gunshot wounds, after which Cook sailed on, leaving pigs that multiplied into a local food source.