Wergaian

The Wergaian were the Wergaia, also called Maligundidj, the people of the mallee eucalypt bushland in north-western Victoria. Their country took in the Wimmera River and a chain of lakes, and their language was a Wemba-Wemba dialect in the Kulinic branch of Pama-Nyungan. Some twenty clans shared the country under a matrilineal order of black and white cockatoo moieties whose relations determined marriage.

The Boorong clan on Lake Tyrrell observed the stars. The rising of Arcturus signalled the harvest of wood-ant larvae, while the setting of Vega marked the season for malleefowl eggs.

Smallpox from the First Fleet of 1788 spread down the Murray ahead of any European, the elders naming it thinba micka. When Thomas Mitchell crossed their lakes in 1836 he became the first white man most Wergaia had seen, his reports soon drawing sheep stations behind him.