Reverend Dr John Fraser (1834 – 1904) was an Australian ethnologist, linguist, school headmaster and author of many scholarly works.
[2] Apart from being an advocate of Christian missions, Fraser was an ethnologist and linguist, with a particular interest in Australian Aboriginal languages.
[5] In the preface, Fraser writes: "...but we have now come to know that this dialect was essentially the same as that spoken by the sub-tribes occupying the land where Sydney now stands, and that they all formed part of one great tribe, the Kuriggai".
In the text accompanying his map, Fraser writes:[5]The New England tribe, the Yunggai has caused me much perplexity...
Historian Niel Gunson wrote in 1974 that the work was "hampered by his peculiar theories of racial and linguistic origin".
[8] During the 1890s the idea spread and soon there was a rash of such terms...Some of these have entered, unfortunately, into popular literature, despite their dubious origins.He goes on to list the Bangarang[9] (Pangerang) (Vic.