TheNgajanji,[1] also writtenNgadyan, andNgadjon-Jii[2] are anIndigenous Australian people of the rainforest region south ofCairns, in northernQueensland. They form one of 8 groups, the others beingYidin,Mamu,Dyirbal,Girramay,Warrgamay,Waruŋu andMbabaram, of the Dyirbal tribes.[3]
Ngajanji/Ngadyan was according toRobert M. W. Dixon, the name for the language spoken by a people whose proper tribal name was Ngadyandyi.[4]
The Ngajanji spokeNgadyan, a dialect ofDyirbal, and one showing the greatest differences with the others, particularly in phonology, where it displays vowel lengthening.[5] A vowel followed byl,r ory and a successive consonant would result in the lengthening of the vowel in question: thusgibar (large fig tree) in the other dialects becamegibaa, andjalgur (meat) becamejaaguu.[6] It also had amother-in-law language (Jalnay) in which, when one's mother-in-law or her kin were around, one substituted standard words with a special lexicon. Thusguda (dog) would be replaced bynyimbaa, having the same meaning.[7]
By the time Robert Dixon started studying the language in the mid 1960s, the number of speakers was down to 6.[8] The last informants concerning Ngajan lived inMalanda.[9]
The traditional lands of the Ngajan, covering 200 square miles (520 km2), lay north and west ofInnisfail, and extended from theAtherton Tableland plateau rainforest east to the upperRussell River, encompassingYungaburra,Malanda, and the mountain range north ofMillaa Millaa.[10] They were bounded on the northern side by theYidinji and, to the east, between them and the coast were theYidinji-Wanyurr. TheWaribarra Mamu lay to their south.
Joseph Birdsell and Norman Tindale once argued that the Ngatjan were one of the tribes demonstrating theirBarrinean hypothesis, according to which the Ngatjan, together with 11 other tribes of this area, -Mamu,Wanjiru,Tjapukai,Mbabaram,Yidinji,Gungganyji,Buluwai,Djiru,Dyirbal,Gulngai andGirramay, - were remnants of aTasmanoid type retaining the smallnegrito stature attributed to the original first wave of Aboriginal peoples in Australia.[11] One late informant appears to have believed that the Ngatjan were closely related to theMadjandji.[12]
The origin of the 3 volcanic lakes in the area,Yidyam (Lake Eacham),Barany (Lake Barrine) andNgimun (Lake Euramoo) is related in Ngajanji myth as the result of the infraction of a taboo by 2 men who had just being initiated into the tribe. At the time of the event, the terrain of the Ngajanji was open scrubland. Their transgression roused the ire of theRainbow serpent, who set the land under their camping site trembling, as cyclonic winds also blew in, and a strange red hue coloured the sky. As a result of the fissures in the earth, the panicking people were swallowed up and disappeared into the bowels of the earth. Dixon considers this legend, which he recorded in 1964, to accurately reflect the historic formation of the volcanic lakes some 10,000 years ago, an event retained by virtue of the tenacious transmission of memories of the eruption among this people and another Dyirbal tribe, theMamu.[13]
The Ngajanji around Yungaburra andLake Eacham were affected by the rush of settlement that followedJohn Atherton's discovery of tin in 1878 atTinaroo, and development of Robson's track linking the district to the coast.[14]
A Russian adventurer Leandro Ilin (1882–1946) settled in the area in 1910, together with several other Russian émigrés, to establish a settlement they called 'Little Siberia'. A widowed Ngajanji woman, Kittie Clarke, was befriended by him, and after she fell pregnant with his child, he proposed marriage. He failed to obtain permission from thesoi-disantProtector of Aborigines atAtherton, and had to struggle to legalize their relationship. They had five children.[15] A documentary film of the story was produced in 2005 by Julie Nimmo.[16]
The last speakers of the dialect were Tommy Land, Jimmy Brown, Mollie Raymond and Ginnie Daniels.[17]
Source:Tindale 1974, p. 183