Wemba-Wemban

The Wemba-Wemba, also written Wamba-Wamba, were an Aboriginal people of the Murray and its tributaries in north-western Victoria and the adjoining Riverina and Mallee country of New South Wales. Their Kulin language belonged to the Pama-Nyungan family; its name followed the common Murray basin pattern of reduplicating the word for no, wemba, and Barababaraba was among its dialects while Nari Nari may have been another.

Their religious life centred on the Dreaming, which they called yemurraki. When Moravian missionaries settled at Gannawarra station to learn the language, the Wemba-Wemba deliberately switched tongues to keep matters secret. The explorer Thomas Mitchell crossed their territory in 1836, and his reports of well-watered grazing plains soon drew squatters in his wake.