Ngargadi

The Ngargadi are the Ngarkat people of the arid mallee country between the lower Murray in South Australia and the Wimmera fringe of Victoria, known to settlers as the Ninety Mile Desert. Songlines crossed their land from the Coorong into the Victorian mallee, drawing them to gatherings with neighbouring tribes along the Murray.

Good stone was scarce in their sandy country, so stone gathered around soakages was knapped into implements; drought burials and abandoned tools record hard seasons. Trade routes crossed their territory, carrying yabby-claw necklaces, pipe clay, red ochre and diorite axes.

Charles Sturt followed the Murray to its mouth in 1830, glimpsing the edge of this network. Europeans largely left the Ngarkat homelands unvisited until overlanders and surveyors entered in the following decade; introduced diseases had already thinned the inland bands before the first runs were taken up.