The Kwiambal are an

Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Isl ...

people of

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

Name

The ethnonym is formed from their word for 'no', transcribed by early ethnographers as ''quie/koi'', and the suffix ''bal'', which denotes a tribal grouping.

Country

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 ...

assigned to the Kwiambal a territorial domain of roughly around the lower Severn River and in the area of Ashford and Fraser's Creek. To their south were the

Jukambal The Jukambal were an indigenous Australian people located in northern New South Wales, Australia. Name The ethnonym Jukambal is form from the word ''juka'', meaning 'no'. Country The traditional lands of the Jukambal stretched over an estimated ...

Tribal status

In his account of a journey south of Brisbane in 1855, the Presbyterian missionary William Ridley wrote

I came down the Gwydir to the Bundarra, and over that river to
Warialda Warialda is a town in the North West Slopes region of New South Wales, Australia, in Gwydir Shire. Situated on the banks of Warialda Creek, the town's name means "Place of Wild Honey" in local aboriginal language. At the , Warialda had a populati ...
. The aborigines I found at Warialda, twelve in number, speak
Kamilaroi The Gamilaraay, also known as Gomeroi, Kamilaroi, Kamillaroi and other variations, are an Aboriginal Australian people whose lands extend from New South Wales to southern Queensland. They form one of the four largest Indigenous nations in Aust ...
as well as Uolaroi; but they were the last I met who spoke to me in the former language. A
day's journey A day's journey in pre-modern literature, including the Bible, ancient geographers and ethnographers such as Herodotus, is a measurement of distance. In the Bible, it is not as precisely defined as other Biblical measurements of distance; the dis ...
northward from Warialda, I found blacks speaking Yukumba; and on the
Macintyre MacIntyre or McIntyre is a Scottish surname, relating to Clan MacIntyre. Its meaning is "Son of the Carpenter or Wright". The corresponding English name is Wright. People surnamed ''MacIntyre'', ''Macintyre'' * Alasdair MacIntyre, Scottish phil ...
, 70 miles from Warialda, Pikumbul is the prevailing language.

Tindale intuited that the geographic context a day's riding from Warialda would imply that these people, whom Ridley called Yukumba, must have been Kwiambal. At the same time he did not exclude the possibility that they may have been a horde of the

. The objections to merging the Kwiambal with Jukambal, or vice versa, were twofold: the size of their estimated territory was too large to refer to a clan or band society, and, secondly, the ethnonym ''Kwiambal'' has a -''bal'' tribal suffix.

Alternative names

* ''Koi'' * ''Kweembul'' * ''Queenbulla'' * ''Quieumble'' Source:

Some words

* ''goone'' (whiteman) * ''kuppenea.'' (mother) * ''maroni.'' (kangaroo) * ''menni.'' (tame dog) * ''parpinga.'' (father) Source:

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * * * * * * * {{Authority control Aboriginal peoples of New South Wales