Wardal

Wardal is the name of an Aboriginal people recorded by Norman Tindale, whose country he reckoned from Lake Carnegie west and northwest toward the Canning Stock Route, with Lake Nabberu to the south; the name seems to mean “west” or “westerners”, and neighbours called them Waula, “northerners”. The country here lies farther west, in the Mid West inland from the coast around Geraldton, where scattered water sources and seasonal resources shaped movement through the dry woodland and scrub.

Its neighbouring peoples were the Badimaya of the Mount Magnet and Yalgoo country and the Watjarri to the north-west. On the coast beyond lay the Houtman Abrolhos, where the Dutch ship Batavia was wrecked in 1629, an early landing of Europeans on this coast.