A Visit to ADNYAMADANA Country

At the end of March 2025 Your Amateur Researcher travelled with Aurora Coach Tours on a trip lasting about ten days to South Australia's Flinders Ranges, joining the coach in Adelaide. While the main destination was the Flinders Ranges, there were places and things of interest to see on the way. First urban, then outback, Australia rolled by as the coach gradually worked its way northwards past buildings, farmland, fields, transmission lines and occasional power stations, expanses, hills and distant mountain ranges. Gawler, Tarlee, Clare, Orroroo, Hawker.

The first Europeans arrived in South Australia in 1836 and, for the most part, everything to be seen, besides the landscape itself, had been constructed, organised and achieved in the last hundred or so years. But there is another story here, perhaps not so immediately apparent, which every Australian, no matter how new, should look to see and celebrate: this country is home to the world's oldest living culture.

It is the story of the people who lived here in Australia before us, long before us. They were not in large numbers, but in fact reached everywhere. It is thought they, too, came to this distant land just as we ourselves or our forebears did, although much earlier, almost unimaginably earlier, about thirteen times earlier than the Egyptian pyramids were built. The number 65 000 years is often mentioned. These first peoples probably arrived in the far north, somewhere in the vicinity of present-day Darwin, probably coming not just once but with successive arrivals. At least some of the time, assisted by lower sea levels during ice ages, some may have come on foot, not by sea. The last ice age was about 10 000 years ago, when it was possible to walk to Tasmania. From tiny beginnings the numbers of the first peoples slowly grew, and they gradually spread over the continent.

At the start they would have all spoken the same language but over the immense time that followed, as families and groups spread across the vast distances, the language of the groups concerned gradually changed. Languages always change: we can barely understand English of Shakespearian times, and that was only 400 or so years ago. Different languages and dialects developed in different areas of the continent. Scholars have identified where these language areas were, and still are, and have given them names, sometimes the original names of the languages, where known. So, from Adelaide, the Aurora coach passed though Kaurna land, then through Ngadyuri, Nugunu and into Adnyamadana country, each of which can be seen, sometimes spelt slightly differently, on the language map below.

Part of South Australia showing Aboriginal language areas

Underpass at Gawler, S.A.

Martindale Hall, Mintaro, S.A.

Nukunu language area sign, near Port Germein, S.A.. Manufactured locally by Sonnex Pty Ltd and reproduced with their permission

Welcome to Adnyamadhanha land sign at the Cazneaux Tree, Flinders Ranges, S.A.

Australian language names—unlike those with the readily comprehensible simplicity of Latin, French, Dutch, English, Italian and so on, in Europe—are often of daunting complexity, such as Warnindilyakwa of Groote Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Ngangnyatjara in south-east Western Australia, and Andyamadhanha in the Flinders Ranges. However, Andyamadhanha, which can be more simply spelt as Andya-madana, becomes less formidable once it is explained that the first part of it means stone or rock, of which there is an abundance everywhere in the region, and the second part means people or group. So the name actually just means ‘stone-mob’, and the people living there are ‘the stone mob’. The locals, in conversation, pronounce the name ‘adnya-madna’, considerably easier for ordinary non-Aboriginal Australians such as this Aurora group to come to terms with.

Languages in about three-quarters of the Australian continent follow the same general pattern. The remaining portion of them, all in the north-west corner closest to New Guinea, are somewhat different. Those in the bigger segment are referred to as Pama-Nyungan languages, pama and nyungar being respectively the words for man in far north Queensland on the one hand, and the point farthest away from there, south-west Western Australia, on the other. Adnya-madana is a Pama-Nyungan language, as are the languages of Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and most of mainland Australia.

Map of Australia indicating Aboriginal languages as Pama-Nyungan or non-Pama-Nyungan

Some features of the English language are word order and prepositions. The order of words matters in English—change the order of ‘dog bites man’ to see who is doing the biting—but in some languages, including Australian Aboriginal languages, words can be in virtually any order. Prepositions are the generally short words that give specific meaning to what we say: up, down, under, beside, to, from, with. Other features of English are articles, which are the words the, a and an; and the fact that plurals (when there is more than one of something) are generally formed by adding -s. Unlike in English, in Pama-Nyungan languages there are no prepositions, and no articles, and most often plurals are not bothered with either (‘two cat’ conveys the same information as ‘two cats’). Sometimes Aboriginal languages seem to follow the principle of simplicity, as indeed English does, too, at times: unlike French, Italian and other languages, English does not have genders (masculine and feminine) for ordinary things such as tables, spoons, water, and in fact every object or idea you can name. Likewise, there are no genders in Aboriginal languages.

So how does Adnya-madana, and all the other languages like it, manage without prepositions and articles? They do it through suffixes, or word endings, very often several of these attached to a word stem like carriages to a railway engine. While Pama-Nyungan languages do not all manage their suffixes in exactly the same way, it is still possible to generalise and observe that for verbs (words of action: run, speak, throw and the like), there might be one type of suffix to indicate when an action took place, such as now, or in the future, or in the past; and in some languages (as in Sydney) to notice another type of suffix being added, to indicate who did it, such as I, he, we, you or they. Similarly for nouns (words that are the names of things and ideas), there are suffixes to indicate on, from, to, of, and much more. Interestingly, Latin is somewhat like this, with suffixes for nouns and verbs doing things similar to what has just been mentioned.

While staying at a tourist resort near Wilpena Pound, a depression surrounded by mountains—and a principal reason for visiting the area—Your Amateur Researcher was told about and obtained a copy of a 440-page book on the Adnyamadhanha language. This book made it possible to analyse the welcome sign illustrated above.

The analysis of this sign, the picture with the dark-green background above, follows:

Welcome sign

The green-shaded words can be seen on the sign, and the line below is also part of the text on the sign, serving as a general translation. The next lines below, in blue, are the word-for-word analysis, with the suffixes separated out by hyphens. Finally there is a translation of this analysis, in italics, then brief explanatory notes.

nangGa! inardi ngarlbarlaru yarda

Welcome to this land

nangGa!      ina-rdi      ngarlba-la-ru            yarda

greeting /   this-xxx    enter-xxx-xxx            country

Hello! … enter … this country

Suffixes: unknown significance

Wandu yanarngga nuda Adnyamathanha Yarta tharri

Great that you have come to Adnyamathanha Country.

wandu   yana-ngGa       nuda      Adnya-maDaNa    yarda-DaRi

good      go-come-did    you-all    stone-mob            country-towards

It’s good that you have come to Stone-mob country

Suffixes: -ngGa: past tense; -DaRi: allative towards

Wandu ngapulara yartanga vidnyika

Have a great time while moving around our country.

wandu   ngabula-ra     yarda-nga      widnyi-ga

good      us-all-of           country-at       move-IMP!

Good (time as you) move (around) our country

Suffixes: -ra: possessive of; -nga: locative at; -ga: imperative

Wandu ngukanda nuda ngapulara yarta nguni nudara yarta tharri

Travel safely out of our country to your next destination.

wandu    nguga-nda    nuda       ngabula-ra    yarda-nguni     nuda-ra     yarda-DaRi

good       go-now          you-all     us-all-of        country-from    ye-all-of     country-towards

Good (time as) all you (as you go) from our country to your country

Suffixes: -nga: locative at; -ra: possessive of; -nguni: elative from; -DaRi: allative towards

Nobody in the Aurora Coach Tours party, including the undersigned, knew a word of this language when we left Sydney.

Jeremy Steele

30 May 2025