Butchulla

The Butchulla, also written Badjala, Badjula, Badjela, Bajellah, Badtjala and Budjilla are an Indigenous Australian people of Queensland.

The Butchella spoke Badjala, considered to have been a dialect of Gubbi Gubbi, like other Fraser Island dialects. Their ethnonym, variously transcribed as Butchulla/Batjala has been etymologized as signifying 'sea folk', though Norman Tindale suggested that the word better lends itself to an analysis as combining ba ('no') with the suffix tjala, meaning 'tongue'.

The Butchulla language is spoken in the Hervey Bay region inland towards Maryborough and Mt Bauple; as well as along the Fraser Coast, including Fraser Island.

Butchulla lands were concentrated on in the centre of Thoorgine, or Fraser Island, and extended over 1,700 sq. miles to the coastal mainland (Cooloola ) south of Noosa. To their north were the Ngulungbara while on their southern flank were the Dulingbara, two of the 16 hordes that were reported to dwell on Frazer Island. The Butchulla route to the mainland ran through the lower waters of the Tinana Creek and their territory ran north to Pialba in Hervey Bay, and their borders to the west ran parallel to the upper Mary River. To the southwest of their mainland territory were the Gubbi Gubbi, with the territories of the Butchulla, Gubbi Gubbi and Dulingbara sometimes marked as meeting at Mount Bauple. Some two decades after the arrival of Europeans, the original population of Fraser Island was estimated to be in the range of approximately 2,000 people, according to Archibald Meston, a figure which, if true, would mean that the ecology was sufficiently rich in food resources to sustain one of the densest pre-contact populations of the Australian continent, paralleling only the Kaiadilt of Bentinck Island.

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