The Wakara or Wakura 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
Queensland
)
, nickname = Sunshine State
, image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, established_ ...
.
Country
The Wakara are estimated by
Norman Tindale
Norman Barnett Tindale AO (12 October 1900 – 19 November 1993) was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist.
Life
Tindale was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1900. His family moved to Tokyo and lived ther ...
to have had a tribal domain of some 3., running along the southern flank of the
upper Mitchell River, and extending eastwards as far as
Mount Mulligan
Mount Mulligan is a former mining town and now a rural locality in the Shire of Mareeba, Queensland, Australia. In the Mount Mulligan had a population of 4 people.
It is the site of the Mount Mulligan mine disaster, Queensland's worst mining ...
. To the west their frontiers lay around
Wrotham Park
Wrotham Park (pronounced , ) is a neo-Palladian English country house in the parish of South Mimms, Hertfordshire. It lies south of the town of Potters Bar, from Hyde Park Corner in central London. The house was designed by Isaac Ware in 17 ...
and
Blackdown.
History of contact
White contact with the Wakara began in 1875, when settlers remarked that they were a powerful tribe in the region. They also noted the presence of another group, west of Mount Mulligan, called the ''Wunjurika'', which may have been an autonomous tribe or simply a
band society
A band society, sometimes called a camp, or in older usage, a horde, is the simplest form of human society. A band generally consists of a small kin group, no larger than an extended family or clan. The general consensus of modern anthropology ...
of the Wakara. Within 15 years, by 1890, the Wunjurika had been so thoroughly absorbed into the Wakara tribe that they lost whatever independent identity they may have had. Though numerous at the initial stage of contact, the
Goldfields Commissioner on the Hodgkinson diggings, H. M. Mowbray, wrote that within the decade, they had been "much reduced by its frequent encounters with the
Native Police
Australian native police units, consisting of Aboriginal troopers under the command (usually) of at least one white officer, existed in various forms in all Australian mainland colonies during the nineteenth and, in some cases, into the twentie ...
and the settlers, as well as by diseases introduced by the Whites." Syphilis, also spread by contact with whites, further ravaged the tribe.
Alternative names
* ''Koko-wogura''
* ''Kookoowarra'' (according to
R. H. Mathews, and signifying "bad speakers")
* ''Wakoora''
* ''Wakura''
* ''Wun-yurika''
Source:
Some words
* ''amoo''. ('mother')
* ''beeroo-beeroo''. ('white man')
* ''kia'' ('tame dog')
* ''nunchun'' ('father')
Source:
Notes
Citations
Sources
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{{authority control
Aboriginal peoples of Queensland