Bilinara

Bilinarra country lies in the Victoria River District of Australia's Northern Territory. Its remembered extent includes the Moray Range, Delamere, the Victoria River Downs area and the junction of the Victoria and Armstrong rivers. Blacksoil plains, limestone gorges and sandstone outcrops give this country a varied surface: water collects and spreads across the plains, while stone rises in ridges and gorges between them. The name itself may describe the land, for bili means rock or hill.

Bilinarra people maintain a distinct identity even though the language is closely related to Gurindji and Ngarinyman and mutually intelligible with both. Speakers regard their own speech as separate, preserving a distinction that outsiders did not treat as a strict boundary. Pastoral settlement transformed this world.

Dispossession brought killings, disease, forced work and the mixing of people from different language groups on stations. The landscape and language together carry the history of both enduring attachment and colonial violence.