Ngadjurian

The Ngadjurian are the Ngadjuri people of the mid north of South Australia, from Gawler to Orroroo on the Flinders Ranges. Their ethnonym combines the words for we and man, meaning we men. Their language belongs to the Thura-Yura branch of the Pama-Nyungan family.

They buried their dead according to formal rites, sometimes smoking or drying the bodies first. Parties of up to a hundred men organised mass possum hunts through the timbered hills, while bands moved between soakages and campsites according to the seasons.

Their country lay inland when South Australia was proclaimed at Adelaide in 1836, and the Ngadjuri were among the later Aboriginal peoples of the colony to be directly displaced. Epidemics had already weakened their numbers, and the water-scarce country made band society vulnerable once stations and copper mines occupied their springs.