Aboriginal communities of the Yass district

The Yass to Boorowa district is part of the former Ngunawal language area. Its Aboriginal family networks were linked with major Aboriginal settlements in central NSW such as Brungle station, Erambie and Warangesda mission. It contains some of the earliest areas of European pastoral settlement, with the development of two distinct Aboriginal ways of life. The first was the camps, drawn to the edge of Yass, the main ‘magnet’ of settlement. The second was people in small farm blocks. They attached themselves to large landholdings (stations), surviving on small farm blocks, or provided seasonal labour. These early Aboriginal small-scale farmers are now almost forgotten. They represent a fascinating phase, before the Board was formed in 1883 to actively manage a reserve system. Some of the earliest historically known Aboriginal figures, now turned into local legend, belonged to this colonial period. Some of their descendents lived on farms or reserves; others moved into the expanding cities.

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The families of Yass and Tumut/Brungle were so connected, that they should be treated as a single group. Many Yass households had close relatives in Brungle. Yet in terms of settlement form, they comprised three distinct communities: Brungle ‘Aboriginal station’, the town fringe campers in Yass and the people camped on Aboriginal farmlets near Rye Park.

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The pastoral town of Yass contained unrecorded camps on places near the early town, such as the showground, during the 1830s to 1880s. Showground camps are mainly known from local white oral history at places such as Cowra, Queanbeyan, and Yass. The predated the formation of the Board in 1883, which set aside a series of small Aboriginal reserves near the towns.

The Yass and Tumut districts contained three identifiable but kinship linked communities: The Yass town campers, the Brungle reserve people, and the Rye Park farmlet residents. Oral accounts point to families, such as Russell and Lane at Rye Park, regarding themselves as very separate from the locally residing ‘fringe’ families at Yass, who were integrated at a quite different level into the town’s economic life.

Source: Extracts from Survival Legacies: Stories from Aboriginal settlements of Southeastern Australia by Peter Kabaila (2011), pp.197-199.


Are you descended from the Aboriginal communities of the Yass district?  Please share your memories.