Wemba-Wemba

The Wemba-Wemba are an Aboriginal Australian people in north-Western Victoria and south-western New South Wales, Australia, including in the Mallee and the Riverina regions.

[2] When Moravian missionaries came and started to learn a language in Wemba Wemba territory, at Archibald Macarthur Camppbell's Gannawarra station, they quickly noted that the Aboriginal people, perceiving they were understood, slipped into using another language, not willing to allow this "cultural conquest" to enable the white men to learn of matters they wished to keep secret from outsiders.

[3][a] Before European settlement in the nineteenth century, the Wemba-Wemba occupied the area around the Loddon River, reaching northwards from Kerang, Victoria to Swan Hill, and including the area of the Avoca River, southwards towards Quambatook.

In a northeasterly direction, their territory ran up, over the New South Wales-Victorian border to Booroorban and Moulamein, and extended to the vicinity of Barham.

Spieseke, convinced that the Wembawemba, whom they called culli, were "the most wretched and bleakest (people), who live on God's earth",[6] established Lake Boga mission in 1851.