Wulgurukaban

The Wulgurukaban, whose name means canoe people after the wulgurru bark canoe, are a seafaring Aboriginal grouping of the coast and islands around Townsville in north-eastern Queensland, holding roughly a thousand square miles of mainland shore, Magnetic Island, the Palm Islands and adjoining waters. Local estate groups spoke dialects of the Wulguru language, an eastern Pama-Nyungan tongue without noun classes.

In eight-foot bark canoes they netted fish, took turtles and dugong with turtle-shell hooks, gathered trepang and travelled between islands across open water, leaving shell middens and stone fish traps along the coast. In 1770 James Cook, sailing the Endeavour through these waters, saw them paddling such canoes between the mainland and Magnetic Island at low tide.