Qualla: Ulgundahi Island https://qualla.com/ulgundahi-island en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:03 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/6/u/b/ulgundahi-island-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Ulgundahi Island https://qualla.com/ulgundahi-island Ulgundahi Island: Introduction https://qualla.com/ulgundahi-island/ Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name means "shape of an ear" in the Yaegl language, and from above, this low green island does curve like a listening shape laid into the Clarence River near Maclean. For nearly half a century, Ulgundahi Island was something the Yaegl people did not choose. Beginning in 1904, the New South Wales authorities gazetted it as an Aboriginal reserve and pushed families here from camps scattered across the lower Clarence, placing them under a white manager answerable to the Aborigines Protection Board. Yet the same island that was meant to contain a people instead helped them survive as one. The Yaegl were born here, married here, buried their dead here, and remember every one of them still.

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/6/u/b/ulgundahi-island-wp/r6ub-ulgundahi-island-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ulgundahi Island: Pushed to the River https://qualla.com/ulgundahi-island/ Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Aboriginal people first came to Ulgundahi around 1880, retreating to the island as introduced diseases swept through and European farms swallowed the country they had always known. What began as refuge hardened into policy. In 1904 the reserve was gazetted, and the Protection Boa...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/6/u/b/ulgundahi-island-wp/r6ub-ulgundahi-island-pushed-to-the-river.mp3 0:06 2 full Ulgundahi Island: Life Under the Board https://qualla.com/ulgundahi-island/ Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The control was total in the way only bureaucratic control can be. Men cut cane and carried it to the Harwood mill; families tended peaches, oranges, mangoes, passionfruit and grapes, and prepared vegetables for the markets. But the money never reached the people who earned it. E...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/6/u/b/ulgundahi-island-wp/r6ub-ulgundahi-island-life-under-the-board.mp3 0:06 3 full Ulgundahi Island: Holding the Community Together https://qualla.com/ulgundahi-island/ Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Inside those constraints, the Yaegl made a life that was theirs. In 1910 the residents built a small church, later furnished when John Cameron paid the balance owed, and an organ was carried in for Mrs Blakeney to play. Cardy Craig and his wife Sarah Blakey became, in 1909, the f...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/6/u/b/ulgundahi-island-wp/r6ub-ulgundahi-island-holding-the-community-together.mp3 0:06 4 full Ulgundahi Island: The Water Has the Last Word https://qualla.com/ulgundahi-island/ Photo credit Tentotwo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The river that defined the island also doomed the settlement. Flooding was relentless. The 1921 flood was a grim ordeal, families left to fend for themselves for up to three months; more floods followed in 1928 and through the 1940s and 1950s. In 1951 the government closed the sc...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/6/u/b/ulgundahi-island-wp/r6ub-ulgundahi-island-the-water-has-the-last-word.mp3 0:06 5 full Ulgundahi Island: Saltwater People, Recognised https://qualla.com/ulgundahi-island/ Photo credit Виктор В, CC BY-SA 3.0. The story did not end in departure. The island is owned today by the Yaegl Local Aboriginal Land Council, and the community still farms it, runs educational tours, and tends the country their ancestors held. In November 1996 Yaegl elders, among them Joyce Clague and Della Walker,...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/6/u/b/ulgundahi-island-wp/r6ub-ulgundahi-island-saltwater-people-recognised.mp3 0:06 6 full