Gringai

Gringai otherwise known as Guringay, is the name for one of the Australian Aboriginal people who were recorded as inhabiting an area of the Hunter Valley in eastern New South Wales, north of Sydney. They were united by a common language, strong ties of kinship and survived as skilled hunter–fisher–gatherers in family groups as a clan of the Wonnarua people.

The tribal reality now called Guringay was originally referred to by Alfred William Howitt under his preferred name for it, as the Gingai/Gringai. Norman Tindale however judged that Gingai/ Gringai – and by implication Gurimay- actually referred to the Warrimay. Jim Wafer thinks that the people spoke a western dialect of what he calls 'Lower North Coast' language (LNC), of which Warrimay was also a dialect.

The Guringay are thought to have dwelled around the Allyn River, and the Williams River and Paterson River valleys. The centre of their territory is on the land where the modern town of Dungog (perhaps 'clear hills' in the Gringai dialect) lies.

Based on inferences from mortality data collected in 1845, after 15 years of colonization, it is estimated that on the eve of the white encroachment on their valleys, the Gringai probably numbered about 300. The last 'full-blood' Gringai woman, Nancy, died in 1885. The first contact was probably with cedar-cutters. In 1827, a convict employed as a shepherd killed a native dog and was killed in retaliation. A punitive expedition made their reprisal by killing 12 aboriginals, presumed to be Gringai, on the Paterson River.

Two people of the Gringai are known by that name as a result of their arrest and subsequent trials. Wong-ko-bi-kan (Jackey) and Charley were both arrested within a year or so of each other in the 1830s. He was judged guilty nonetheless and sentenced to be transported to Tasmania for manslaughter after spearing a John Flynn on 3 April 1834. Flynn died soon after. Flynn had been a member of an armed troop of 9 settlers who went to the aborigines' camp at the Williams River at dawn to arrest some of them for culling sheep on their land. Wong-ko-bi-kan could, in another perspective, be said to have been defending the native camp from armed intruders. Wong-ko-bi-kan's case found some sympathy among the judge presiding and observers, for the way in which the settlers had provocatively approached the native camp. Wong-ko-bi-kan's case elicited some sympathy among the presiding judge and several observers, for the way in which the settlers had provocatively approached the native camp. Wong-ko-bi-kan died in his Tasmanian prison soon after, in October of that year.

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