Borroloola

Borroloola is a town in the Northern Territory of Australia.

Borroloola is a town in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located on the McArthur River, about 50 km upstream from the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Garrwa (also known as Garawa) is a language of the Gulf region, taking in the localities of Borroloola and Westmoreland. The Garrwa language region takes in the landscape of the Roper Gulf Regional Council and the Doomadgee Shire Council.The 'Coast Track' follows the path of cattle drovers of the late 19th century as they moved herds from north-west Queensland to stock the new stations of the Northern Territory and the Kimberley. The drovers, in turn, followed a well-worn Aboriginal path. Tony Roberts (2005) writes a moving and well-researched history of the region, in which the local tribes went from almost total isolation from European Australians in 1870, to a decimated collection of displaced and defeated groups, over a single decade. Entire tribes such as the Wilangarra, including women, children and babies were massacred, and most adult males were killed, by police and quasi-police groups, and by drovers and station workers involved in the cattle droves of that era.

Borroloola was declared a town on 10 September 1885. In the local Indigenous languages of Yanyuwa, Garrwa, Marra, Gudanji and Binbingka, Borroloola would be written as Burrulula. The name belongs to a small lagoon just to the east of the present day caravan park. The name originally Borrolooloo, translates borrow women, name of the lagoon and associated with the Hill Kangaroo. It was at this site that the Hill Kangaroo Ancestral Being (Nangurrbuwala) danced his ceremonies. The white-barked gum trees in the area are said to be his body decorations as they flew from his body as he danced. Other Indigenous names in the area of Borroloola are Wurrarawala (Trig Hill) this hill is associated with the backbone of the Hill Kangaroo Ancestor. Bunubunu (Rocky Creek), this creek is associated with a File Snake Ancestor. Warralungku (The McArthur River Crossing) and Mabunji, a set of specific rocks at the McArthur River Crossing that carries the imprint of the Hill Kangaroo's tail and feet. The area of Borroloola belongs to members of the Rrumburriya clan.In 1977, the Yanyuwa people were the first to successfully lodge a claim under the new Federal Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 over Borroloola and the Pellew Islands. The claim was finally resolved in 2015. A second land claim in 2002, saw the remaining islands in the area also handed back.

Borroloola has a tropical savanna climate with the 3 distinct seasons of the Northern Territory, the wet season, the dry season and the build-up season. Extreme temperatures have ranged from 44.1 °C (111.4 °F) to 0.4 °C (32.7 °F)