The Giabal ranged over some 7,300 square kilometres (2,800 sq mi) of territory which lay between Allora and around Dalby. Their eastern extension ran close to Gatton, while their western frontier reached west to Millmerran.[1] According to Stephen Wurm and Suzanne Kite, the Giabal were the southernmost branch of the Baruŋgam.[2]
History of contact
The first historical notice we have of them appear in an account written by William Ridley, a missionary who undertook a journey among the tribes of southern Queensland in 1855. He stated that the tribe whom he encountered in October of that year at Yandilla, spoke a language called 'Paiamba'.[1]
Ridley's entry is very brief:
Thence I came up the Weir, a tributary of the Macintyre; at four stations thereon, I met with forty blacks; all speak Pikumbul, and know something of Kamilaroi.From the head of the Weir, I again crossed the Downs by Yandilla,where I found nearly a dozen blacks who speak Paiamba, a dialect containing a few words like those of the Brisbane tribes, but which was for the most part quite strange to me.[3]