Gazetteer of Historical Australian Places
| Name | The Great Bunya Gathering: Early Accounts |
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| Description | Places mentioned in quotes from colonial sources, compiled by Ray Kerkhove. |
| Type | Text |
| Content Warning | Colonial accounts of Indigenous people. |
| Contributor | bill.pascoe@newcastle.edu.au |
| Entries | 39 |
| Allow ANPS? | No |
| Added to System | 2024-01-26 10:37:04 |
| Updated in System | 2024-01-27 17:00:18 |
| Subject | Indigenous, Bunya, Aboriginal, Journey Way, History |
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| Creator | Ray Kerkhove & Bill Pascoe |
| Publisher | |
| Contact | bill.pascoe@unimelb.edu.au |
| Citation | Kerkhove, Ray The Great Bunya Gathering, Early Accounts Enoggera, 2012 https://www.academia.edu/8244371/The_Great_Bunya_Gathering_Early_Accounts |
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| Linkback | https://www.academia.edu/8244371/The_Great_Bunya_Gathering_Early_Accounts |
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| License | Copyright, Ray Kerkhove |
| Usage Rights | Permission granted for inclusion in TLCMap by Ray Kerkhove. In his preface Kerkhove writes, "The purpose of this little document is to help raise awareness of the amazing event that was and is the Bunya Gathering. I am grateful to Beverly Hand for her interest in, and support for, this work, and Alex Bond and Ian Smith for their comments and advice. Special thanks must be extended to the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, John Oxley Library and Hayes Library (University of Queensland) for use of their resources, and to the many Brisbane City Shire, Moreton Regional Shire and Sunshine Coast Regional Shire libraries (too many to list) that I have visited to examine Local Studies/ Local Histories collections." |
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"The bunya pine tree fruits every year to a certain extent, but in every third March it gives forth a prolific crop of Bunya nuts. This fact was known to the black man, and from all points of the compass he came, from the Downs, Moreton Boy, the Burnett, the Dawson, and from, far down the Condamine river. In fact, I heard my father say that on one occasion he saw a tribe of Barcoo blacks arrive. A lean, gaunt miserable lot they were, but they went away happy, and with skins as sleek as mice. The Bunya festive season used to last about six weeks, and, strange though it may seem, the blacks would arrive almost simultaneously on the mountains. By what means they measured time over a period of three years, and calculated with such precision the exact month in every third year when the bunya pines would be in full fruit is somewhat difficult for us to understand. We knew that the black man measured time by moon periods, but how he calculated the number of moons that would occur between one season and another, and kept a correct record of them is one of those things known only to themselves."
Bennie, J.C. 'The Bunya Mountains – Early Feasting Ground of the Blacks' The Dalby Herald 14 February 1931, p 6
"I went to Booroon. A creek, fed by shady gulleys of the brushes, passes it; low ranges, all covered with thick brush, all of the igneous formation, surround it; many a bunya tree looks down on the capers of the children of the forest and brush, of plain and mountain, of sea coast and of the country inland." - The Letters of F W Ludwig Leichhardt December 1843 Vol. 2, p 795
"There was also a small open plain called "Booroon," (Baroon Pocket Maleny), the name of the bora ceremony in the Mary River dialect, and there the men fought in single combats, and threw the spear and boomerang, and had wrestling and running matches, and there, too, the young men went through their initiation ceremonies..." - Archibald Meston, 'The Bunya Feast Mobilan's Former Glory,'. In the Wild Romantic Days,' The Brisbane Courier (Qld), Saturday 6 October 1923, p 18
"This plain they call Baroon, and it seems the rendezvous for ights between the hostile tribes who came from far and near to enjoy the feast of the bunya..." - John Archer, 1884 in Stan Tutt, Sunshine Coast History Brisbane: Discover 1994, p 146
"The great Bunya Scrub, called Boorum by the natives, from an open space in the middle of it, where they hold their great meetings..." - 'Report 2nd Additional Remarks on the Bunya District and Its Natives,' Simpson Letter-book AD 1842, in G Langevad, Cultural & Historical Records of Queensland, No. 1, July 1979 St Lucia: Anthropology Dept, Uni of Qld, p 2
"Booroom... takes this direction perhaps for 50 miles from north to south, is almost impenetrable except by crawling on the hands and knees. Here the bunya is plentiful and in the month of January, the blacks assemble for hundreds of miles round, and partake of the fruit....." - 'Statement of Bracewell and Davis as to the Supposed Administration of Poison to Some Blacks by White Men,' Simpson Letter-book AD 1842, G Langevad, Cultural & Historical Records of Queensland, No. 1, July 1979 St Lucia: Anthropology Dept, Uni of Qld.
"In the early days, the Blackall Ranges was spoken of as the Bon-yi Mountains and it was there that Duramboi and Bracewell joined the feasts, and there also that father saw it all." - CC Petrie, Tom Petrie's Reminiscences of Early Queensland (Brisbane: Angus & Robinson, 1983), p 12
"The Maroochy District was the home of the great bunya forest." - Audienne Blyth John Low's House and Family, Yandina - Koongalba 1894- 1994 Yandina 1994 , p 38
"This (Nambour/ Maroochy district) is the great bunya country. It extends about 10 miles further south and goes north to about Pinbarren." - William Pettigrew 1865 in Rev. Joseph Taiton,, Marutchi History of the Sunshine Coast Nambour: Taiton, 1976, p 103
"The Bunya Bunya tree (here) is conined to a narrow belt of elevated country on the coast range, averaging from twelve and a half miles wide by twenty ive in length...." - Journal; of a Naturalist Continues, The Argus (Melbourne) Monday 1 July 1850, Page 4 (NB Leichhardt describes the area as "10 miles wide by 50 miles long").
"(There) were large forests of those trees in the early days (around the Blackall Ranges etc.). They lourish still in places, but nothing has been done to protect them..." - J Zillman, In the Land of the Bunya Sydney: W. Dryrock, 1899, p 18
"(Bunya pines) clothed the (Blackall) range.... (with) almost impenetrable scrub.... (and) red cedar of 20 ft girth..." - Dave Hankinson Reminiscences of Maleny Maleny: Maleny & District Centenary Committee 1978, p 3-4