Gurnditjmara people

The Gunditjmara, also known as the Dhauwurd wurrung, were an Indigenous Australian people of southwestern Victoria. They were the traditional owners of the areas now encompassing Warrnambool, Port Fairy, Woolsthorpe and Portland.

Gunditjmara is formed from two words Gunditj an affix signifying ‘belonging’ and mara, their word for an aboriginal person of that area.

The Dhauwurd wurrung language is classified as one of the dialects of the Bungandeik/Kuurn-Kopan-Noot subgroup of Victorian languages. , and consisted of 5 subdialects: Wullu wurrung, Gai wurrung, Gurngubanud, Peek wurrung, and Dhauwurd wurrung. . The language in its several varieties, was spoken from Glenelg to the Gellibrand and through to roughly 60 miles inland. Other generic terms for this linguistic complex refer to it as Kiriwurrung (Keerraywoorroong) or the Warnambool language. Only three speakers were known to speak the language still by 1880, with another 4 still fluent in the Peek wurrung dialect. .They had a form of avoidance speech called gnee wee banott (turn tongue) which required special terms and grammar in conversations when a man and mother-in-law were speaking in each other’s company. . Thus: if one asked:’Where are you going just now?’ This would be phrased in normal speech as:

In Gunditjmara avoidance speech the same sentiment would be articulated quite differently:

The Gunditjmara tribal territories extended over an estimated 2,700 sq. miles . The western boundaries were around Cape Bridgewater and Lake Condah . Northwards they reached Caramut and Hamilton. Their eastern boundaries lay around the Hopkins River. Their neighbours to the west were the Buandig people, to the north the Jardwadjali and Djab wurrung peoples, and in the east the Girai wurrung people. Early settlers remarked on the richness of the game to be found from the Eumerella Creek down to the coast.

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