The early explorer Edward Eyre mentioned them in his work (1845) under the name Boraipar and transcribed a number of words from their language.
[2] The smallpox that devastated the Latjilatji, as it did all the Murray riverine tribes (Tatitati, Jitajita, Nari-Nari, Barababaraba, Warkawarka, Watiwati, Wemba-Wemba) after initial contact with whites was established, was described by Peter Beveridge, writing of his impressions in the 1850s.
During the early stages of its ravages the natives gave proper sepulture to its victims; but at last the death rate became so heavy, and naturally, the panic so great, burying the bodies was no longer attempted- the survivors merely moved their camps leaving the sick behind to die, unattended, and the dead to fester in the sun, or as food for wild dogs and carrion birds, until in a short time the whole atmosphere became tainted with the odour arising from the decomposing bodies...When the bright torrid summer displaced the moister spring, after devastating these tribes, gradually died out, leaving but a sorry remnant of the aborigines behind, to mourn the depopulation of the land, and many, many moons waxed and waned before the fell destroyer's foul presence was even partially forgotten.
To this day the old men who bear such patent traces of the loathed distemper speak shudderingly and with so much genuine horror as it is impossible for any other evil to elicit from them their inherent stolidity'.The death of John Mack in 1918 was reported as that of the "last blackfellow" of the "Murray River tribes" and specifically of the original people of Mildura, which was on Latjilatji lands.
Mack's aboriginal name was, according to Ronald and Catherine Berndt, who interviewed his first wife, the Jarildekald woman Pinkie Karpeny in 1891, was Djelwara/Telwara, (born 1842 and he was said to have hailed, east of Mildura, from Laitjum, near Culcairn station in Kalkine territory, in New South Wales.