River down to its junction with the Indi River, and the Tambo River to Tongiomungie. On the latter river they were in contact with the Kurnai. It is worth noting that the old road from Omeo to Bruthen follows the trail by which the Gippsland and Omeo blacks made hostile incursions into each other's countries.
The first mentioned, the now extinct Ya-itma-thang, occupied the mountain country in which rise the rivers Mitta-Mitta and Tambo, and some of the sources of the Ovens, and extended north at least as far as the Upper Yackandanda River, called by them Yakonda.[1] I have been able to learn but little of the local organisation of the Theddora. Their country was discovered and occupied about the year 1838. In 1852 gold was discovered at Livingstone Creek, one of the confluents of the Mitta-Mitta, and a great rush of miners set into the Omeo diggings. In 1862 there only remained four or five of this once numerous tribe.
The eastern boundary of the Ya-itma-thang was about the Cobbora Mountains, and thence down the Indi River to Tom Groggin's Run, their neighbours on that side being the Wolgal and Ngarigo tribes.
The Wolgal lived on the tablelands of the highest of the Australian Alps, and in the country falling from them to the north. The boundaries of their country commenced at Kauwambat[2] near to the Pilot Mountain, following the Indi River to Walleregang, thence to the starting-point, Kauwambat, by Tumberumba, Tumut, Queenbean, Cooma, and the Great Dividing Range.
The Ngarigo had the Wolgal on the north, the Ya-itma-thang on the north-west, the Kurnai on the west and south-west, and the Yuin or Coast Murring to the south-cast. The Ngarigo in fact occupied the Manero tableland. The name of this tribe was that of its language, and the tribespeople called themselves "Murring," that is "men,"
- ↑ An intelligent Theddora woman told me that her tribe extended as far as the upper waters of the Yakonda (Yackandanda), from which place she went as a wife of one of the Omeo Theddora. The term miittung appears to he the equivalent of the baluk of the Kulin.
- ↑ Kauwambat means "woman" in the Wolgal speech.
