Wirangu

The Wirangu are an Aboriginal people of the far west coast of South Australia. Their traditional country ran along the coast between the Head of Bight and Streaky Bay and stretched inland as far north as Ooldea.

Their language belongs to the Thura-Yura branch of the Pama-Nyungan family, and early ethnographers noted that the Wirangu, Banggarla and Nawu were much the same people in speech and custom. Wirangu mythology tells of a great mother snake pursued across the land by the two Wati Kutjara men; where the wounded serpent rested, red, yellow and white ochre deposits formed, the red ochre being her blood.

Even before European settlement the southward-moving Kokatha had driven them from part of their country, and when the colony of South Australia was proclaimed in 1836 the Wirangu were already partly displaced.