Malpan

The Malpan, more often recorded as the Kalaako or Kalarko, were an Aboriginal people of the Goldfields-Esperance region of southern Western Australia. Their country ran north from Green Patch and Scaddan past Widgiemooltha, bounded by the Bremer Range to the west and ending short of the Fraser Range in the east, where a red-ochre quarry named Karkanja marked the border.

Their language, Galaagu, also called Malpa, is a Pama-Nyungan tongue closest to the Nyungar languages; neighbouring Wudjari called them Malba, the circumcised and subincised people, after their initiation rites. When the Swan River Colony was founded far to the west in 1829 this inland country was still untouched, and European explorers and prospectors only arrived decades later.