The Ngarlawongga, or more properly Ngarla, were an

Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, excluding the ethnically distinct people of the Torres Strait Islands. Humans first migrated to Australia 50,000 to 65,000 year ...

people of the inland

Mid West region The Mid West region is one of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is a sparsely populated region extending from the west coast of Western Australia, about north and south of its administrative centre of Geraldton and inland to east of W ...

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

. They are not to be confused with the

Ngarla The Ngarla are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Country Norman Tindale estimated their territory, to the west of Port Hedland, at around , describing it as lying along the coast to the west of Solita ...

who live on the coast.

Country

The Ngarlawongga were the people who inhabited the area of the headwaters of the Ashburton and

Gascoyne The Gascoyne region is one of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is located in the northwest of Western Australia, and consists of the local government areas of Carnarvon, Exmouth, Shark Bay and Upper Gascoyne. The Gascoyne has about of ...

rivers, going south to the vicinity of the Three Rivers and Mulgul. Their eastern extension ran to Ilgarari. In

Norman Tindale Norman Barnett Tindale AO (12 October 1900 – 19 November 1993) was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and ethnologist. He is best remembered for his work mapping the various tribal groupings of Aboriginal Australians ...

's estimation, their tribal territories covered some . On the Ngarlawongga's boundaries, to their immediate north were the Mandara, then, running clockwise, the Wirdinya north-east, followed by the

Wardal The Wardal were an Aboriginal Australian people of the Mid West and Goldfields-Esperance regions of Western Australia. Country Norman Tindale calculated by inference that the Wardal's lands covered around , from Lake Carnegie running west and ...

, and the Madoitja south/southeast and the

Watjarri The Wajarri people, also spelt Wadjari, Wadjarri, Watjarri, and other variations, are an Aboriginal Australian people whose traditional lands are in the Mid West region of Western Australia. Boolardy Station, along with the tiny settlement of ...

to their south-west. The Ninanu lay on their western flank, below the northwestern Inawongga.

People

The Australian writer

Katharine Susannah Prichard Katharine Susannah Prichard (4 December 18832 October 1969) was an Australian author and co-founding member of the Communist Party of Australia. Early life Prichard was born in Levuka, Fiji in 1883 to Australian parents. She spent her childhood ...

's 1929 novel of interracial love,

Coonardoo ''Coonardoo: The Well in the Shadow'' is a novel written by the Australian author Katharine Susannah Prichard. The novel evocatively depicts the Australian landscape as it was in the late 1920s, in an age when white settlers tried to control more ...

, was written directly after her stay among the Ngarlawongga while resident on McGuire's pastoral station, which was run by local Aboriginal people. She called them ''Gnarler'' and found the Ngarlawongga both "poetic" and "naive".

Alternative names

* ''Ngalawongga'' * ''Nalawonga'' * ''Ngarla-warngga'' * ''"Southern Pad'ima" Ngalawonga'' * ''Ngarla'' (to be distinguished from the

of the

De Grey River The De Grey River is a river located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It was named on 16 August 1861 by the explorer and surveyor Francis Gregory after Thomas de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey, who was at the time the president of the Royal ...

)

Notes

Citations

Sources

* * * * {{authority control Aboriginal peoples of Western Australia Mid West (Western Australia)