These stems are roasted, and eaten by the Aborigines, who cut them for this purpose when they are about a foot and a half high, and thicker than a mans arm. If any of the boys are very young, they may be required to carry a fire-stick till their hair grows as long as it was before being singed at the water-hole in the bush, as already described. The mystery bags carried by the men evidently held some significant superstitious meaning, the profundity of which I was never able to fathom, despite careful inquiry on the subject. At this stage the coverings were removed from the women, all of whom were covered in perspiration, as much the sweat of fear probably as of the heat of the day. His depictions were not of the Gringai, but the assumption is made that the Gringai shared some of the ways of dress with the Indigenous Browne depicts. There (were edible roots In the gullies, wild- fruits in the brushes. Rubbing the palms together he would cause the upright stick he held to revolve rapidly, the point gradually boring Its way through the pith beneath. In this section, explore all the different ways you can be a part of the Museum's groundbreaking research, as well as come face-to-face with our dedicated staff. That, so far as I can recollect, concluded that particular ceremony. In the course of time, they were, therefore, thoroughly disciplined and properly trained. The old men who are in the ring with the women, therefore, conduct each mother to her son where he is standing holding the hand of the men on each side of him. Dungog Chronicle : Durham and Gloucester Advertiser (NSW : 1894 - 1954) Fri 25 Apr 1919 Page 3 The Earliest Inhabitants. . The blacks attack on Kiripit homestead was averted by the merest accident. The howling continued all the time. They will remain in custody awaiting your orders respecting them. The attire usually consisted of a kangaroo skin tied round the middle with a belt of fibre or sinews. (I may here mention this burial place has been held sacred by his descendants, and many of the tribe have been buried there since then, the dead being conveyed many miles in order that they might make this their last resting place.) I was working at Irwins once and remember the [women] coming down opposite Tillegra house. At this camp there are pantomimic performances nearly every night, the men dancing and acting on the clear space already described. Naturally they avoided as much as possible the necessity of going through this process. Some cattle were speared and the rest driven through the wild brushes at the head of the Myall, almost to the foreshores of Port Stephens. First, the mothers of the boys are set free - then the sisters - and lastly, the other women and children are uncovered. I. am informed they are camped between my place and Mr Boydells. The third difficulty is the racist presumptions of some of these texts. . ) ?B6=! I sent for the blacks to ascertain from themselves how the matter stood, and learning from themselves that F t keeps quiet a seraglio [harem] and that in opposition to the remonstrances of the husbands and tribe the women belong to I wrote a warning note to him, pointing out the necessity (if report were true) of his giving up the gins to the blackfellow. I happened to have a few emu feathers stuck in the band of my hat as an ornament. WNAC focuses on nurturing the history and culture of the Wonnarua Nation, improving the wellbeing of its members and managing investments to sustain the . Mustering the Tribes.-When it is found that there are a sufficient number of boys old enough for initiation, the head-man of the tribe whose turn it is to call the. I saw the trees tattooed and marked for a hundred yards round the ring, but I never saw any ceremonies there. Barrallier (1802:81-82) observed at Newcastle that the Aborigines ate the roots of Fern [which he surprised a youth in the act of collecting] and a sort of root or yam. Ganghat . On perceiving these Billy flatly re- fused to accompany us. Sometimes the animal imitated is the kangaroo - the men hopping along one after the other. The apron was probably a European conceit. The pieces of burning bark which the sisters of the novices have been obliged to carry, as before stated, are left at the kweealbang. in that locality. My great-great-great grandmother belonged to the Gringai group of the Won- narua people. Strings are bound tightly round the upper arms of the novices to make their muscles swell, which is supposed to cause their arms to grow stronger. One or more of the tribes who intended, to be present may have been unavoidably detained on the way, and do not reach the main camp until a few days after the novices have been taken away. Future of historic Ravensworth Estate sets up showdown between Indigenous groups, coal company, There is an emergency bushfire warning in place for Maintongoonin Victoria. The men help each other at this work, until every man and boy present have been painted white all over their bodies. The patient was seated or placed in a reclining position on the ground. I was in company with my old friend the late John Hopson on the tableland when he found a stone axe-heart there. Long before resource companies moved in to tap into the rich coal reserves below, surgeon James Bowman established the Ravensworth Estate in 1824 and it became a hub for horticultural experimentation. %PDF-1.7 % The Wonnarua also had trade and ceremonial links with the Kamilaroi people. . Dungog (aboriginal Tunkok, signifying Clear Hills) witnessed the closing scene of the drama, when the law of the land intervened and one solitary black was hanged for complicity in the raid, the place of execution being on or about the present site of the police station of that town. The Wonnarua people's traditional lands are located in the Hunter Valley area of New South Wales. I have edited out many instances of phrases such as howling savages and gins and have tried to keep the excerpts as cultural reportage, not cultural judgement, but inevitably the historical reports indicate the white cultural mores of the time. (Vinnicombe 1980: VI 4), was also eaten at Lake Macquarie (Threlkeld in Gunson 1974:55) and in the Dungog area (Ebsworth 1826:71), where it was called Bungwall. Fitzpatric does not comment on this and the poisonings are so far apart in time that it is impossible to say if they are one and the same or two separate massacres. Australian Indigenous family. These were called cumiml, and varied considerably in size and construction according to the purpose for which they were designed. Anxiety states were deliberately contrived by the guardians who told the boombits that the Goign (great spirit) was attacking the camp and killing the women and children. Figure 8: A sketch of a bora ground near Gloucester, showing the position of the two rings 18 chains or 362 metres apart. 69 0 obj <> endobj If a boy wants anything, he must touch his guardian, who then commences asking him the most likely things, until he guesses correctly, when the boy nods assent. They were immediately followed by the hosts, each of whom carried green bushes in their hands. Tho leader, scanning the. he would cry. In fashioning their canoes the blacks showed a skill and craftsmanship that was surprising, considering that any form of building was to them practically an unknown art. After these singular appetisers, the chief would throw the carcase on the fire and leave the game to cook. Baime awoke and created everything, the mountains, plains, rivers and every living thing. Poisoning is the most cowardly form of massacre and the Aboriginal race cannot, do not, forget despite their kindly nature. Groups living near the Wonnarua include the Darkinjung and the Wirad Dungog Chronicle : Durham and Gloucester Advertiser (NSW : 1894 - 1954) Sat 20 Aug 1949 Page 2 NATIVE WAYS AND NAMES. In response to the PCWP's application for Aboriginal heritage protection, she appointed an independent anthropologist to prepare a wide-ranging report. to retire to the river he did not notice that a badly wounded man was left on the field, until he saw a Wallamba man rush out of the scrub and kill him with a nullah. When asked by the manager why he did such a thing the Wallamba man said, I finis him, and ran off again and thus ended the battle of Gloucester, which after all appears to have been a battle of words and much abuse, and not much else. The company has spent more than$15 million formulating plans for the project, which includemoving the homestead to a nearby farm, or the town of Broke, 35km away. or four more did the same, some most viciously, while others seemed to think a little of that sort of thing went a great way. describes how a band of blacks stole a child, the daughter of a Mrs. Easterbrook, whose husband was a clerk of the A.A. Company at Stroud. Indeed the men would never discuss them at all. Some sheets of bark are now laid on the ground just inside the boundary of the back part of the ring, or, in other words, on that side of it which is farthest from the pathway leading to the goonambang. On one occasion my father, having caught several of the youths in the act of purloining some of these delectables, remonstrated with them, and upbraided them sternly for stealing. The mothers are painted on the chest and arms, and are invested with their personal adornments. Ironbark was used in their manufacture, and the bulging knob was capable of putting an enemy out of action with little trouble. Eleven blacks were killed and the child recovered. grease. The fire-making sticks they used were usually parts of the dried stem of the grass-tree (pummirri). The Melanesian cultural area is the nearest neighbour of Australian and the museum holds a significant collection of cultural material from Melanesian nations. Macarty then took the whites and put us across the creek where the dam now is. Under the open side leaves are thickly strewn on the ground, for the men and boys to lie upon. Online help is available anytime from other FamilySearch users. Baiame is often shown with internal decorations such as waistbands, vertical lines running down the body, bands and dots. It was also here at the goonambang that the boys experienced what was to be their harshest physical ordeal of the ceremony. Nothing in the nature of an outrigger was ever. [There was] a fight between the Wallamba tribe and a portion of the Kabook (Gloucester, Barrington, Rawdon Vale tribes). To the European ear, the Gringai made no real differentiation between d and t, or g and k. Thus the word for a revered spirit being is variously described as Coen, Koin and Goign: all are representations of the same word. This only lasts a few minutes and then all the men follow after the novices. 27 Philip Street Sydney N. S. Wales 1820. would be launched, wreaking deadly destruction in the ranks of the unsuspecting prey. The sketch appeared in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey of New South Wales. Saturday, 8th June. Among the last remaining artefacts of that era is the Ravensworth homestead, whichlies directly in the path of a proposed extension to Glencore's Glendell coal mine. At day-break the following morning a number of the men who have been camping with the women at the kackaroo proceed to the goonambang, tapping their boomerangs together as they walk, and join the other men who were there all night. This proved to be the case. Discover your family history. He told those that were with him, to make the sign of peace with them which they did by waving the right hand over the head and then pointing to the ground. One of the men goes into the ring, swinging his bull-roarer, and the other walks along one side near the women. Thank you for reading. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 26: 320-340. [citation needed], The missionary William Ridley adopted the name of Baiame for the Christian God when translating into Gamilaraay (the language of the Kamilaroi). Michael Smiths The Kutthung dialect on a deleted website accessible through, the Wayback Machine, https://goo.gl/twRvRg (KTT). A hole was dug in easy soil in a well shaded locality, about two-feet deep and circular. These logs were generally supposed to have been left by floods, but I never felt satisfied, for they were mostly about the same distance apart. Hence the name Baal Belbora. The stripping operation was carried out with an exact judgment, lines being cut cross- wise with a tomahawk around and across the tree so that the section removed would be of the required size and shape. At various times they were ordered to assume uncomfortable positions and to remain so until the sun crossed the sky. The other piece would be thinner, and rounded In a blunt point. Two fled south, one of whom (an elderly man) was overtaken early in the pursuit; the other a man named Green traversed the wild mountain[s] .. of the Upper Gloucester, Monkerai, Wangat and Chichester Rivers, resting only to fly again from the sounds of his relentless dusky pursuers. During the celebration of these rites, a bull-roarer is sounded in the neighbouring forest. Some time ago I despatched two of the Mounted Police to put in force a warrant issued by Mr G. Rowley, J.P, against three black fellows who assaulted and beat a man in charge of sheep who endeavoured to protect his masters property ; but these sable thieves being apprised of the troopers approach collected to the number of thirty or forty, and having amongst them at least a dozen muskets and plenty of ammunition, which the settlers most improperly [supplied them], they resisted and the soldiers were fain to retreat, which they did with much difficulty, not until several shots were exchanged, the troopers cartridge box wrenched from his person, and his arm wounded with a tomahawk. Tra ditional hunting grounds were depleted, and sacred sites were destroyed. A piece of suitable wood invariably myrtle had to be found, curved as much as possible in the rough shape to be assumed by the finished article. Some of the game caught during the day is cooked for the novices, the bones and sinews being taken out of it, and the pieces cut small, so that they may not be able to distinguish what animals flesh is being given to them. The latter keep marching on, and the keerang follow them till they arrive at a water-hole or running stream, which has previously been agreed upon as a suitable bathing place. On the first night of the arrival of the novices at the kweealbang, some human excrement is given to them as they sit in the camp. The kangaroo, practically ex- tinct about Port Stephens now was in the middle decade of last century, the favorite food of the blacks. She was Indeed a wonderfully lucky fisher. If it is intended to erect the camp only a little way off, the pole is short; but if the new camp is some distance away, the pole is long. Mr. McKenzie, a son-in-law of Mr. John Rawden was the first manager and no doubt he had many difficulties to contend with, one of his chief troubles being caused by his employees, almost all of whom were assigned servants (convicts), many being hardened criminals. One of the most remarkable beliefs I remember, also concerns [fishing] An aboriginal woman, Fanny, who was a servant of our family for many years, was in her girlhood days dedicated to the art of fishing. And then I read Mary Gilmores book Old Days, Old Ways, telling of how the blacks felled, the trees across the rivers to make fish traps. At Dungog a figure of sixty per cent is given. necessity no doubt guided their deft hands, for the art of fashioning their weapons was inherited from countless generations who had to pit their wits against Nature in the battle for survival. It was as pretty a place as I know of anywhere. The wordgames anagrams, crossword, Lettris and Boggle are provided by Memodata. The hair on the heads of the inovices is now singed, for the purpose of making the women believe that Goign has had them in the fire during their sojourn in the bush. A cave near Milbrodale contains many Wonnarua Aboriginal paintings, including a large figure of a man who may be Baiame. In general he precedes the coming of natives from distant parts, when they assemble to celebrate certain of their ceremonies, such as the knocking out of teeth in the mystic ring, or when they are performing some dance. At the given signal the men would dash into the water until up to their mid. Kabooks. . Anagrams They, too, were buried at Violet Hill. Long Tommys [wife] picked up a fire stick and flattened Flash Tommy out. Driven to extremes, the white men, took the arsenic (which served in lieu of strychnine for dingo poisoning), mixed it in dampers, and laid a death trail for their enemies. Another bush dainty, easily procurable in the right season, was the curramali, a fruit that grew on a little vine in the bush. They were astonished and indignant. Scott Franks, of the Plains Clans Wonnarua People (PCWP), believedthe colonial past of the RavensworthEstateinvolvedthe brutal massacre of First Nations people. . of the same class ran off together they were punished by death if captured.A man was not permitted to speak to his wifes mother and could only do so through a third party. As soon as a black got hold of a white mans tomahawk, he would remove the handle to substitute it with one of his own fashioning. Magistrates of the Dun- gog District, responding to an 1845 survey, recorded that the diminution in births was most remarkable, attributing the decline to sexual intercourse with the whites at a very tender age. The flesh was cut with a little sharp stone, and then the black so operated upon would lie out in the sun. 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