The Dhirari (or Dirari or Tirari) were an

indigenous Australian Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

people of the state of

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

. They are not to be confused with the Diyari people, though the Dirari/Dhirari language (now extinct) was a dialect of the

Diyari language Diyari () or Dieri () is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Diyari people in the far north of South Australia, to the east of Lake Eyre. It was studied by German Lutheran missionaries who translated Christian works into the 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 Lake Eyre ( ), officially known as Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, is an endorheic lake in east-central Far North South Australia, some north of Adelaide. The shallow lake is the depocentre of the vast endorheic Lake Eyre basin, and contains the ...

, running northwards from

Muloorina Muloorina is both a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station and a formal bounded locality in South Australia. The name and boundaries of the locality were created on 26 April 2013 after the long-established local name. The property ...

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 part ...

. 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 Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...

denoting part of the land they occupied,

Tirari Desert The Tirari Desert is a desert in the eastern part of the Far North region of South Australia. It stretches 212 km from north to south and 153 km from east to west. Location and description The Tirari Desert features salt lakes and ...

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * * {{authority control Aboriginal peoples of South Australia