Aboriginal Victorians

[3] There is some evidence to show that people were living in the Maribyrnong River valley, near present-day Keilor, about 40,000 years ago, according to Gary Presland.

[5] Similar archaeological sites in Tasmania and on the Bass Strait Islands have been dated to between 20,000 and 35,000 years ago, when sea levels were 130 metres (430 ft) below present level, allowing Aboriginal people to move across the region of southern Victoria and on to the land bridge of the Bassian plain to Tasmania by at least 35,000 years ago.

[7][8] There is evidence of occupation in Gariwerd (the Grampians) – the territory of the Jardwadjali people – many thousands of years before the last Ice Age.

[12]) The Wurundjeri mined diorite at Mount William Quarry, a source of the highly valued greenstone hatchet heads, which were and traded across a wide area as far as New South Wales and Adelaide.

The mine provided a complex network of trading for economic and social exchange among the different Aboriginal nations in Victoria.

During winter the Djab wurrung encampments were more permanent, sometimes consisting of substantial huts as attested by Major Thomas Mitchell near Mount Napier in 1836:

[17]During early autumn there were often large gatherings of up to 1000 people for one to two months hosted at the Mount William swamp or at Lake Bolac for the annual eel migration.

Rather, mixtures of vocabulary and grammatical construction exist in such regions, and so linguistic maps may show some variation about where one language ends and another begins.

There is considerable debate over the substance and location of North-eastern Victorian indigenous languages including Mogullumbidj, Dhudhuroa and Yaithmathang.

[25] Howitt considered Mogullumbidj the easternmost dialect of the Kulin speaking tribes of central Victoria, but Clark argues the name is a descriptive term of appearance.

The Assembly hopes to agree upon a framework, umpire and process before November 2022, the date of the next state election.