The Dhirari (or Dirari or Tirari) were an
indigenous Australian people of the state of
South Australia. They are not to be confused with the
Diyari people, though the Dirari/Dhirari language (now extinct) was a dialect of the
Diyari language.
Name
Some confusion arose when, in 1904, the ethnographer
A. W. Howitt confused this distinct, if small, tribe with their neighbours, the Diyari, suggesting it was a name for a
horde
Horde may refer to:
History
* Orda (organization), a historic sociopolitical and military structure in steppe nomad cultures such as the Turks and Mongols
** Golden Horde, a Turkic-Mongol state established in the 1240s
** Wings of the Golden Hord ...
of the latter. The German missionary
Otto Siebert testified in 1936 that the Tirari's speech differed from Diyari language.
Country
Norman Tindale estimated their tribal lands as covering roughly . They dwelt around the eastern shore of
Lake Eyre, running northwards from
Muloorina to the
Warburton River
The Warburton River (or Warburton Creek) is a freshwater stream in the far north of South Australia that flows in a south westerly direction and discharges into the eastern side of Lake Eyre. It is one of the state's largest rivers, and is par ...
. Their eastern frontiers were at
Killalapaninna.
History of contact
The Tirari were extinct by the time of Tindale's writing (1974). Their name is memorialized in the
toponym denoting part of the land they occupied,
Tirari Desert.
Notes
Citations
Sources
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Aboriginal peoples of South Australia