Pangerang

Not to be confused with Bangerang, Victoria.

The Pangerang, also spelt Bangerang and Bangarang, are the Indigenous Australians who traditionally occupied much of what is now north-eastern Victoria stretching along the Murray River to Echuca and into the areas of the southern Riverina in New South Wales. They may not have been an independent tribal reality, as Norman Tindale thought, but one of the many Yorta Yorta tribes.

Country

Pangerang lands were estimated by Norman Tindale to have covered some 6,700 square kilometres (2,600 sq mi), running through the lower Goulburn River valley and extending westwards to the Murray River. It covered areas east and west of Shepparton, taking in also Wangaratta, Benalla, and Kyabram. The southern reaches extend as far as Toolamba and Violet Town.^[1]

History of contact

Some Pangerang were among the estimated 26 indigenous people killed by troopers at Moira Swamp/Lake Barmah on the 15 December 1843.^[2]

Social structure

According to Norman Tindale, the Bangerang collective of tribes, or nation, also known as the Yorta Yorta, consists of eight hordes, though others have been included in the list.

• Moiraduban
• Waningotbun (at Kotupna)
• Maragan (perhaps Maraban)
• Owanguttha^[a]

We know somewhat more about the fish-loving Wongatpan and the opossum-hunting Towroonban, two Pangerang clans, simply because they happen to have been the tribes inhabiting the area where the ethnographer Edward Micklethwaite Curr took over his pastoral run.^[4]

Alternative names

• Panggarang, Pangorang, Pangurang, Pine-gorine, Pine-go-rine, Pinegerine, Pinegorong
• Bangerang, Banjgaranj
• Pallaganmiddah
• Jabalajabala (from the word jabala meaning no), a name applied to western Pangerang hordes)
• Yaballa, Yabula-yabula
• Waningotbun
• Maragan
• Owanguttha
• Yurt (exonym used by northerners and the Ngurelban, from jurta, meaning no)
• Yoorta
• Moiraduban
• Moitheriban^[3]
• Bangarang^[5][b]