TheGiabal, also known as theGomaingguru, were anindigenous Australian tribe of southernQueensland.[1]
The Giabal ranged over some 7,300 square kilometres (2,800 sq mi) of territory which lay betweenAllora and aroundDalby. Their eastern extension ran close toGatton, while their western frontier reached west toMillmerran.[1] According toStephen Wurm and Suzanne Kite, the Giabal were the southernmost branch of theBaruŋgam.[2]
The first historical notice we have of them appear in an account written byWilliam Ridley, a missionary who undertook a journey among the tribes of southern Queensland in 1855. He stated that the tribe whom he encountered in October of that year atYandilla, spoke a language called 'Paiamba'.[1]Ridley's entry is very brief:
Thence I came up the Weir, a tributary of the Macintyre; at four stations thereon, I met with forty blacks; all speak Pikumbul, and know something of Kamilaroi.From the head of the Weir, I again crossed the Downs byYandilla,where I found nearly a dozen blacks who speak Paiamba, a dialect containing a few words like those of the Brisbane tribes, but which was for the most part quite strange to me.[3]
Source:Tindale 1974, p. 168