The Gamilaroi, also known as Gomeroi, Kamilaroi, Kamillaroi and other variations, are an Aboriginal Australian people whose lands extend from New South Wales to southern Queensland.

However, some parts have been reconstructed by late field work, which includes substantial recordings of the related language, Yuwaalaraay, which continued to be spoken down to the 1980s.

Robert M. W. Dixon and his student Peter Austin recorded some around Moree, while Corinne Williams wrote a thesis on the Yuwaaliyaay dialect spoken at Walgett and Lightning Ridge.

[3] The Gamilaraay, like many other tribes, taught young men a secret language, called tyake, during their rites of initiation.

In these systems, the normal profane terms used in everyday speech had to be substituted with the special mystical vocabulary.

[4][5] According to Norman Tindale's estimation, the Gamilaraay's tribal domains encompassed some 75,000 km2 (29,000 sq mi),[6] from around Singleton in the Hunter Valley through to the Warrumbungle Mountains in the west and up through the present-day centres of Quirindi, Gunnedah, Tamworth, Narrabri, Wee Waa, Walgett, Moree, Collarenebri, Lightning Ridge and Mungindi in New South Wales, to Nindigully in south west Queensland.

In rock paintings Baiame is often depicted as a human figure with a large head-dress or hairstyle, with lines of footsteps nearby.

Baiame is often shown with internal decorations such as waistbands, vertical lines running down the body, bands and dots.

In Kamilaroi star-lore myth it is recounted that Orion, known as Berriberri[a] set out in pursuit of the Pleiades (Miai-miai) and cornered them in a mother-tree where they were transformed into yellow and white cockatoos.

His attempts to capture them were blocked by Turramūlan, a one-eyed, one-legged legendary figure associated with the pole star.

The major bora, called Baiame's ground, was cleared on loamy umah soil, roughly 23 metres (75 ft) in diameter, with the scraped earth used to create an embanked ring about 20–23 centimetres (8–9 in) high to fence off the sacred space,[11] apart from one opening which led into a thunburran or narrows pathway that ran some 250 metres (270 yd) off to a smaller circle, some 14 metres (47 ft) in diameter, called a goonaba, constructed in a similar fashion,[12] Inside this ring two stumps (warrengahlee) formed from uprooted trees, one a coolabah the other a belar, trimmed and turned upside down so that the roots, decorated with twists of bark, flared out.

The pathway leading novices from the larger to the smaller circle was adorned with yammunyamun, figures cut into the exposed sapwood of trees along the route, or drawn on the ground.

At 131 metres (143 yd), a 2.7-metre (9 ft) long representation of Baiame and his spouse Gooberangal lay, moulded from the earth, respectively on the right and left of the track.

[15] Further on, still on the left, was a carved figure of the Emu,[b] apparently crouching, its head pointed towards the large bora.

A further 16 metres (18 yd) on, parallel to the track and on Goomee's side, a codfish was depicted, and after it the Currea, a serpentine creature, and, 14 metres (15 yd) on the other side of the path, two death adders, followed then by a turkey's nest, an earth-stuffed porcupine's skin, and a kangaroo rat's nest.

A small example, created by the Coonabarabran Gamilaraay Language Circle (Suellen Tighe, Maureen Sutler, Sid Chatfield & Peter Thompson), is given below.