NANYA (c.1835-1895), founder of one of the last New South Wales Aboriginal families to live by traditional hunting techniques, was a Maraura of the lower Darling. His childhood coincided with incursions in 1839-46 of European explorers, aggressive overlanders and punitive expeditions which killed most of his people, notably in the 1841 Rufus River massacre by South Australian police led by Thomas O'Halloran.

About 1860 Nanya left his camp at Popiltah station, forty miles (64 km) north of Pooncarie. With two women and a steel axe, he went into the waterless mallee country between the Great Anabranch and the South Australian border, known as the 'Scotia blocks', where he lived for over thirty years. Records compiled in 1897-1908 by amateur ethnographers suggest causes for Nanya's self-imposed exile; possibly he had eloped with a woman of his own Makwarra moiety, an offence considered incestuous and meriting death.

Nanya's ...

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Source:

Australian Dictionary of Biography