[1] The Wik peoples inhabited the western coastal area of the Cape York Peninsula between the Winduwinda to the north and the Taior to the south, with the Wik-Mungkan on the eastern flank.
[a] McConnel's overall mapping was succinctly summarized by Sir James Frazer as follows: [They] occupy a stretch of country along the Gulf of Carpentaria, thirty to fifty miles wide through which flow the Watson, Archer, Kendall, Holroyd and Edward Rivers.
The Wik-Munkan do not come in contact with the sea, for a strip of land along the coast varying in parts from two to ten miles wide is inhabited by kindred coastal tribes.
Of these the Wik-Natera or Wik-Kalkan occupy the coast for sixty or seventy miles south of the Archer River, concentrating chiefly on two inland arms of the sea called Yoinka and Arimanka; the Wiki-Natanya or bush-rat people inhabit the corner of the coast between Arimanka and the Kendall - a distance of ten miles, and the Wik-Nantjara occupy the coastal country between the Kendall-Holroyd and the Edward.
[9] Under early colonization and settlement in northern Queensland it was widely thought that the indigenous peoples were "less than worthless, vermin which should be exterminated",[10] and, according to Neva Collings, the Wik were regarded in these terms.