Bunya Attendees

The Bunya festival traditionally occurred about every 3 years, when the time was right. Colonists noticed the movements of people to the Bunya festival and sometimes recorded where people had come from to attend. There were two main locations for the festival. One around Mt Mowbollun in the Bunya mountains, and one in the Blackall Ranges, in particular around Baroon Pocket, near the coast. This map layer shows places people travelled from to attend the festival according to colonists. People would travel weeks across vast distances to attend.

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."

Colonial accounts of Indigenous people.