There is a place on Lake Macquarie, near Newcastle, in New South Wales, called Eleebana. Internet searches result in statements that it is an Aboriginal word meaning ‘place of beauty’. However, there is more to it than that. Eleebana, Lake Macquarie, NSW Lowanna Place, Hornsby, NSW Tangara train, Sydney Fig. 1 Tasmanian words out of place ‘Eleebana’ is not just an Aboriginal word, it is a Tasmanian Aboriginal word and so a long way out of place on Lake

It is not only Your Amateur Researcher (YAR) who finds trying to make sense of the Tasmanian records difficult. Terry Crowley and R.M.W. Dixon wrote in their chapter "Tasmanian" in Handbook of Australian Languages , edited by R.M.W. Dixon and Barry Blake, J., 1981, as follows: on p.420: “The material on Tasmanian is so poor that almost nothing can be inferred with any degree of confidence.” on p.400: “The materials on Tasmanian dialects range from poor to almost non-existent;

Among Australian languages the Tasmanian Aboriginal languages are a special case. The island of Tasmania has been separated from the mainland for perhaps 12 000 years, since the ending of the last ice age. While there is some speculation about whether Tasmanian languages—and scholars estimate there were between half a dozen and as many as twelve—were Australian languages at all, they probably were. Since prior to the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, the Aboriginal people h

What are the Bayala databases? The Bayala databases  are a set of relational databases containing words and sentences in Aboriginal languages from across the country. In the databases, words appear in full and also as broken up into their stem and one or several suffixes (and sometimes prefixes). The databases began simply as lists of Aboriginal words and their corresponding English meanings. Since then they have become increasingly complex, and now provide much more. To give

Meeting some Tasmanians It’s the year 1793, and the place later known as Tasmania. Ten years before the first European settlement to be established. There had been occasional European sightings and visits since 1642, and this was one such, by the French. It was the expedition, under Bruny d’Entrecasteaux, that was looking for the lost explorer La Perouse. They were in Recherche Bay, named after their own ship, on the south-east coast. Fig. 1 Tasmanians in 1793 preparing food,