Djagaraga

Albany Island

Native name: Pabaju
Admiralty Plan No. 1937. Plan drawn in 1862 showing site on Albany Island advised for the proposed Cape York Station, and the best position for the township on the mainland opposite.
Geography

The Djagaraga, Gudang or Yatai are an Australian Aboriginal tribe, traditionally lived in the coastal area from Cape York to Fly point, including also Pabaju (Albany Island), in the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. In the early period of white settlement as the Somerset tribe, after the settlement of Somerset established on their lands in 1863.

They spoke Djagaraga, which according to Kenneth L. Hale's classification, was one of 10 languages of a northern Paman subgroup.

Nonie Smith states that their 'relations with the Western Torres Strait Island people the Kaurareg were 'so close that despite their distinct identity they could be regarded almost as an outpost of the latter.' They also shared trade, kin and ritual links with their eastern coastal tribal neighbour, the Unduyamo Some recent scholarship, basing its inferences on the density of ceremonial rock structures throughout the territory of the Gudang and Unduyamo, speculates that they may have functioned as ceremonial masters for rites of initiation and the magical increase of natural species also for the Torres Strait peoples with whom they had close relations of trade, marriage and religion.