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The Butchulla, also written Butchella, Badjala, Badjula, Badjela, Bajellah, Badtjala and Budjilla, are an Aboriginal Australian people of K'gari, Queensland, and a small area of the nearby mainland of southern Queensland.
In the 1800s, there were reported to be 19 groups that lived on the island permanently, with the island split into three sections. The people in the northern part of the island (Ngulungbara) were a separate group from the other two and did not want to be associated with the Badjala people, when they were pressed into the same mission. The people of the lower part of the island (Dulingbara) also moved along the coast line to Noosa area. All three groups Ngulungbara, Butchulla and Dulingbarra seem to have spoken dialect variations of Gubbi Gubbi.
The Batjala language was spoken in the Hervey Bay region inland towards Maryborough and Mt Bauple, as well as along the Fraser Coast, including K'gari.
Some two decades after the arrival of Europeans, the original population of K'gari was estimated to be in the range of approximately 2,000 people, according to Archibald Meston, a figure which, if true, would mean that the ecology was sufficiently rich in food resources to sustain one of the densest pre-contact populations of the Australian continent, paralleling only the Kaiadilt of Bentinck Island.
The peoples of K'gari were generally classified into three distinct units: Ngulungbara, Butchulla and Dulingbara, each composed of several Band society, and, altogether, making up 19 subgroups. The Ngulungbara were in the northern sector, the Butchulla in the strict sense occupied the middle of the island, while the Dulingbara lay south. The Dulingbara and Ngulungbara claimed a separate, distinct tribal status.
Matthew Flinders was the first white person to land on the island, at Bool Creek on Sandy Cape in July 1802 and made short contact with the Ngulungbara horde. In 1836 survivors of the shipwreck of a brig, the managed to make their way south and landed up on the island. Eliza Fraser, the late captain's wife, managed to survive among the local islanders for several weeks.
The island began to be occupied by white people in 1849. At that time, the Indigenous population of the 19 clans was estimated to be around 2,000. Within three decades (1879), their numbers had dropped to around 300–400, a collapse attributed by an informant of the then Chief Commissioner of Brisbane to shootings by the Australian native police, and the effects of venereal disease and liquor introduced by white people.
The main remnant of the Butchella people, regarded as hostile to settlers, was transferred to Yarrabah sometime around 1902, and to Barambah station.
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