Girramay

The Girramay are an Australian Aboriginal tribe of northern Queensland.

Name

The Girramay ethnonym is formed from jir:a, meaning "man".^[1]

Language

The Girramay spoke the most southerly dialect of Dyirbal.^[2]

Country

The Girramay people's traditional lands extend over some 1,000 square miles (2,600 km²) south from Rockingham Bay to Cardwell. Northwards, their boundaries reach close to the upper Murray River and the Cardwell Range, and also take in inland areas of the Herbert River.^[1]

Society

Before European settlement, the Girramay lived in a mixture of rainforest and open forest environments.^[1]

Foods and artefacts

Girramay territory has trees with a variety of bark that could be beaten into a cloth to fashion a "rain shield" and neighbouring tribes such as the Dyirbal and Ngajanji therefore called this device a keramai, their pronunciation of the Girramay ethnonym.^[a]

• wila (cakes of brown walnut)^[4]

Alternative names

• Kiramai
• Giramai, Giramay, Giramaygan
• Kirrama, Kirrami, Kerrami
• Wombelbara (Warakamai exonym)^[1]

Some words

• gamu (water) cf. Dyirbal bana
• gumbul (woman) cf. Dyirbal jugumbil
• garba (ear) cf. Dyirbal manga
• wuyan, a verb meaning to "keep on taking bit by bit from a group, or from a pile of objects, until scarcely any remain"^[5]
• whoyerr (tame dog)^[6]