Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/83

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II
THE TRIBAL ORGANISATION
57

boundary of the Kamilaroi, a large nation consisting of many tribes under the same designation, which is derived from the negative kamil or kunmil. The boundaries of the Kamilaroi are as follows:—

A narrow strip occupied on each side of the Hunter River up to Murrurundi, thence by the Dividing Range to the foot of the Moonbi, above Tamworth. Thence to Manilla, Barraba, Cobbedah, Bingera, and down the Gwydir and the Barwon to Wallget From this place by a line a little east of Barradine and Conabarrabran to the Dividing Range, near the sources of the Talbragar Creek and the Goulburn River. In short, nearly the whole of the pastoral district of Liverpool Plains.[1]

North of the Gwydir, up to the Queensland border and on the Darling from Walgett to Bourke, we find Kamilaroi and Wollaroi mixed, and on the Castlereagh it is Kamilaroi and Wiradjuri.

The subdivisions of the Kamilaroi, which, since they have female descent, are hordes, occupy separate portions of the tribal territory, each claiming its own taurai or food and hunting grounds, the boundaries of which are well defined, and across which a stranger might not pass in search of food.[2]

The Unghi inhabited a tract of country lying between the Maranoa and Warrego Rivers in Queensland and extending southwards to the Balonne River, being an area of about 10,000 square miles.[3]

North of the Kamilaroi there was at least one other nation in New South Wales organised on the same lines. The Wollaroi or, as it is sometimes called, the Yualloroi, being named, as in the Kamilaroi, from the negative. To the eastward the Wollaroi did not extend beyond the Birie, the Culgoa, and the Maranoa Rivers, which probably also mark the western boundaries of the four sub-class tribes in this part of Australia, for at the Culgoa commences the

  1. These were the boundaries existing sixty years ago according to Mr. C. Naseby's knowledge.
  2. C. Naseby.
  3. A. L. P. Cameron.