Bunya Maps

Maps relating to the Bunya Festival.

Some quotes and links include colonial attitudes towards Indigenous people.

The Bunya Festival is one of the most important traditional Aboriginal gatherings on the east coast of Australia with people travelling vast distances for weeks to attend. The festival was held about every 3 years or so and was initiated with signal fires and invitations being sent from the hosts and passed from group to group. Early colonist of Brisbane, Tom Petrie, gave an example of one of the groups these invitations passed among, in anecdotes recorded by his daughter Alice Petrie. This is a map of that invitation sequence.

"These gatherings were really like huge picnics, the aborigines belonging to the district sending messengers out to invite members from other tribes to come and have a feast. Perhaps fifteen would be asked here, and thirty there, and they were mostly young people, who were able and fit to travel. Then these tribes would ia turn ask others. For instance, the Bribie blacks (Ngunda tribe) on receiving their invitation would perchance invite the Turrbal people to join them, and the latter would then ask the Logan, or Yaggapal tribe and other island blacks, and so on from tribe to tribe all over the country, for the different tribes were generally connected by marriage, and the relatives thus invited each other. Those near at hand would all turn up, old and young, but the tribes from afar would leave the aged and the sick behind." 
Campbell, Constance Tom Petrie's reminiscences of early Queensland (dating from 1837) Brisbane: Watson Ferguson & Co.

Campbell, Constance Tom Petrie's reminiscences of early Queensland (dating from 1837) Brisbane: Watson Ferguson & Co.

public domain

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.

This is reconstruction of the route people, probably Gumbainggir, Bundjalung and Yaegl people, may have taken from around the Clarence River region to the Bunya festival in Jinibara/Kabi Kabi country in the Blackall ranges around Baroon. People travelled from long distances from all directions to the Bunya festival and this is southern route from the coast, which first heads inland. According to one colonist's anecdote, “I clearly remember, since a boy, the blacks of the Clarence returning from the Bunya feast, bringing long black brigalow hand spears... they got from the blacks of Durundur, either as presents or by barter.” - Archibald Meston. The Bunya Feast – Mobilan’s Former Glory. In the Wild, Romantic Days, The Brisbane Courier (Qld), Saturday 6 October 1923, p 18 (While this refers to the western festival at the Bunya ranges, people would have gone to either, depending on what was happening that year.) The timeless bunya festival is living culture. It was not forgotten and has been revived in recent years.

This route is a speculative reconstruction of the route it is not definitive or authoritative, and could be revised with better information and local knowledge.

Places mentioned in quotes from colonial sources, compiled by Ray Kerkhove.

Kerkhove, Ray The Great Bunya Gathering, Early Accounts Enoggera, 2012 https://www.academia.edu/8244371/The_Great_Bunya_Gathering_Early_Accounts

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.