Oriomo

Oriomo, or Eastern Trans-Fly, is a small independent family of Papuan languages spoken on the Oriomo Plateau west of the Fly River, in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. Its members include Meriam, better known as Meriam Mir, the tongue of the eastern Torres Strait islands of Murray, Darnley and Stephens and the only Papuan language spoken on Australian territory.

Mid-twentieth-century classifications placed the family in a Trans-Fly-Bulaka River branch of Trans-New Guinea, but later scholars such as Malcolm Ross and Timothy Usher treated it as an independent lineage.

The island homes of its Meriam speakers lie in the strait first crossed by the Spanish expedition of Luis Vaez de Torres in 1606 and sailed by James Cook's Endeavour in 1770, on the voyage that opened eastern Australia to Britain.