Nidula

The Nidula are the people of Goodenough Island, known locally as Nidula, the westernmost of the three large D'Entrecasteaux Islands in the Solomon Sea. The island rises to the 2,536-metre peak of Mount Vineuo, with some of the steepest forested island slopes; village life has always been confined to the fringing lowlands.

The islands have been settled for several thousand years by peoples related to the Papuans of the nearby mainland, and the Nidula speak Iduna, an Austronesian language of the Papuan Tip cluster, alongside neighboring tongues such as Bwaidoga.

They gardened and hunted on the coastal belt, kept largely to their own valleys and trade routes, and were almost untouched by the outside world until 1792, when the French expedition of Joseph Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux became the first Europeans to sight the archipelago that now bears his name.