Woorabinda

Woorabinda is a rural town and locality in the Aboriginal Shire of Woorabinda, Queensland, Australia.

Woorabindais a rural town and locality in the Aboriginal Shire of Woorabinda, Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Woorabinda had a population of 962 people. It is an Aboriginal community.

Wadja (also known as Wadjigu, Wadya, Wadjainngo, Mandalgu, and Wadjigun) is an Australian Aboriginal language in Central Queensland. The language region includesthe local government areas of the Aboriginal Shire of Woorabinda and Central Highlands Region, including the Blackdown Tablelands. the Comet River, and the Expedition Range, and the towns of Woorabinda, Springsure and Rolleston.The town's name was chosen by Herbert Cecil Colledge, the superintendent of the settlement in 1927 using Aboriginal words, woora meaning kangaroo and binda meaning camp.Woorabinda was first established in 1927, with land gazetted from the County of Waroona, as a replacement for the Taroom Aboriginal Settlement. The land at Taroom was repossessed for the development of proposed Nathan Dam for the Dawson River Irrigation Scheme, which was ultimately never built.

Central Queensland had a high level of frontier violence and Aboriginal deaths, such as at Cullin-La-Ringo at nearby Springsure and Hornet Bank along the Dawson River. There was a forcible relocation of dispossessed survivors into government-controlled settlements starting from 1897, with the introduction of the Aboriginals Protection Act—initially at Taroom, and then Woorabinda.Peoples from at least 17 different language groups were placed within the camp, some from as far as Mornington Island, and were under the control of a local Superintendent beneath the state Chief Protector of Aborigines.

The movement of approximately 300 Taroom residents occurred via foot and hired truck over the 250 km. This walk from Taroom to Woorabinda was commemorated by the community with a supported re-enactment in 2014.The Woorabinda community is the only DOGIT Aboriginal community within the Central Queensland region. DOGIT communities have a special type of land tenure which applies only to former Aboriginal reserves.The land title is a system of community level land trusts, owned and administered by the local council.

At the 2006 census, Woorabinda had a population of 851.