Latje-Latje

The Latje-Latje, or Latjilatji, are the river people of the Murray around Mildura in north-western Victoria, their name a reduplication of their word for no. Their language belongs to the Western Central Murray group within the Kulinic branch of the Pama-Nyungan family.

The Murray gave them Murray cod, yabbies, shellfish, waterfowl and eggs, taken from bark canoes and weirs. The river flats hosted gatherings of Murray basin nations, who shared ceremony, trade and the kicking-and-catching ball game called marn grook.

Smallpox loosed by the British settlement at Port Jackson in 1788 spread down the Murray, and later epidemics depopulated camps before settlers appeared. In 1830 Charles Sturt rowed down the Murray on his voyage to the sea, noting dense weirs and camp smoke; the first stations near Mildura appeared in the middle of the nineteenth century.