Whadjuk
Noongar (Aboriginal Australian) people of the Swan Coastal Plain in Western Australia

Whadjuk or Wadjak, alternatively Witjari, are Noongar (Aboriginal Australian) people of the Western Australian region of the Perth bioregion of the Swan Coastal Plain. They were divided by the Swan and Canning Rivers into four residence groups. The Whadjuk people bore the brunt of the European colonisation, as the cities of Perth and Fremantle were built in their territory.
Name
The ethnonym appears to derive from whad, the Whadjuk word for "no".
Country
The traditional tribal territory of the Whadjuk, in Norman Tindale's estimate, takes in some 6,700 square kilometres (2,600 mi2) of land, from the Swan River, together with its eastern and northern tributaries. Its hinterland extension runs to Mount Helena and a little beyond. It includes Kalamunda on the Darling Scarp and Armadale. It encompasses the Victoria Plains to the north, the area south of Toodyay and reaches eastwards as far as York and a little beyond. Its southern coastal frontier extends to the vicinity of Pinjarra. Their northern neighbours are the Yued, the Balardong people lay to their east, and the Pindjarup on their southern coastal flank.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Whadjuk” as noongar (Aboriginal Australian) people of the Swan Coastal Plain in Western Australia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as noongar (Aboriginal Australian) people of the Swan Coastal Plain in Western Australia. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11267380. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Whadjuk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.