Oates and Oates (1970:209) report Wurm has recordings in Di:ru. The audition sheet for one of Wurm's materials held at AIATSIS (WURM_S03, recorded 1955 - 1960) mentions Di:ru, but has inconsistent information. The audition sheet contains the name Diiru/Di:ru, but this was later amended to Djiru, which appears to refer to Djiru Y124. Wurm's tape list says Di:ru was recorded on Mornington Island but the audition sheet says "Palm Island?". Oates and Oates (1970:209) give the location of Dii:ru as Mornington Island. Note that one language that is spoken on Mornington Island is Lardil G38, and WURM_S03 also includes recordings on Lardil. The audition sheet quotes Wurm's announcement, "I now record the Diiru language ... spoken from Clum Point". There is a place called Clum Point, south of Cairns, which is not far from the location of Djiru Y124, a dialect of Dyirbal Y123. All of the above suggests that it is actually Djiru (Y124) which is recorded in WURM_S03, not Di:ru, and it was probably recorded at Clum Point on the mainland. This can only be confirmed by comparing the recording of 'Di:ru' in WURM_03 to the recording of Lardil, but for now Di:ru is treated as a mistaken identity, that is, it refers to Djiru Y124. Note that MURA has items on a person called Pompey Clumpoint from Palm Island. It may be because of this that the audition sheet says "Palm Island?".
Search OZBIB
Speaker numbers were measured differently across the censuses and various other sources listed in AUSTLANG. You are encouraged to refer to the sources.
Speaker numbers for ‘NILS 2004’ and ‘2005 estimate’ come from 'Table F.3: Numbers of speakers of Australian Indigenous languages (various surveys)' in 'Appendix F NILS endangerment and absolute number results' in McConvell, Marmion and McNicol 2005, pages 198-230 (PDF, 2.5MB).
