The Waywurru (Waveroo) people are the Traditional Custodians of the middle Ovens Valley and Lower Kiewa Valley. Their country extends from Benalla and Glenrowan down to Barjarg, across to Oxley and the King Valley, along the Ovens River from Wangaratta to Whorouly, up to Beechworth and Mount Pilot, across to Mudgegonga and the Yackandandah Valley, and over to the Kiewa Valley from Gundowring to Wodonga, Tangambalanga, Mount Murramurrangbong and the Baranduda Ranges.
The Waywurru spoke their own language, which linguists call ‘Pallanganmiddang’, but others simply call ‘Waywurru.’ However, Pallangan-middang is actually the name of one of two Waywurru local groups or ‘clans’, with Tare-re-mittung being the other (Tare-re meaning places of plentiful water, seen in names such as Tarrawingee and Targoora). The surviving Waywurru vocabulary contains over 300 words.
Before European contact, the Waywurru had strong social and kinship connections, as well as diplomatic and trading relations with other groups. These included those from the ranges and Upper Murray country of the Dhudhuroa peoples and alpine groups such as the Wolgalu on the western slopes of the Snowy Mountains and the Yaitmathang of Omeo. Waywurru people also had close kinship and ceremonial connections with the Taungurung and Woiwurrung (Wurrunjeri) peoples, including those from Mansfield to as far away as the Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges.
When European over-landers invaded the Port Philip district (Victoria) in the late 1830s, the path they followed ran though Waywurru lands. Pastoralists who took up land along the middle Ovens River Valley, such as George Faithfull of Oxley, William Bowman of Everton, and George Edward McKay of Whorouly, encouraged their convict servants to shoot Waywurru people. Mass poisonings with ‘sweet damper’ made from arsenic-laced flour, also took place. Some Waywurru warriors resisted the invasion of their lands, spearing sheep and cattle, and also killing stockmen and removing their kidney fat. This ‘caul fat’ (kidney fat) was considered a powerful ingredient to be used in sorcery, either by being consumed or rubbed over their bodies. The ritual process of removing the caul fat was known as ‘buckeening’. The fight for country may have finally come to an end when Faithfull and his stockmen massacred possibly more than two hundred men, women and children, on the King River above Oxley in the early 1840s, leaving their bodies strewn along the river.
Waywurru survivors of the Frontier Wars did their best to maintain their traditional seasonal movement around their country for as long as they could manage, even continuing to hold corroborees well into the 1880s. Some worked as household servants and as station labourers. Aboriginal ration depots were established at Barnawartha, Tarrawingee, and Yackandandah. In the 1860s, the government established an ‘Aboriginal Reserve’ of 640 acres on the ancient hunting and fishing grounds at Tangambalanga.
When the Tangambalanga Reserve was closed in the early 1870s, government officials swept up as many Waywurru children as they could, and took them to Coranderrk reserve at Healesville. The remaining Waywurru people sought solace at a reserve at Lake Moodemere, near Wahgunyah. While some parents of those children taken to Coranderrk reserve chose to follow, other community members stayed ‘on country’ until the end of their days, maintaining regular camps along the rivers at places like Oxley and Markwood, as well as other familiar places like Tangambalanga.
Waywurru Women's Collective 