November 1998

Historical Notes:
The Bunya Pines of Southeast Queensland

by Roger Ford

THE Southeast corner of Queensland is home to thousands of species of plant life but few are as physically impressive or culturally significant as the Bunya Pine. Despite its name, the tree is a Queensland native and completely unrelated to European species of pine.

The Bunya Pine regularly grows to a height of 50 metres or more with the trunk often reaching one and a half metres across in width.

Although they can be found in parks throughout Southeast Queensland the natural range of the Bunya pine is limited to the wet, forested areas of the Great Dividing Range, north-west of Brisbane.

Each year, Bunya Pines grow large cones almost the size of a football which contain about 50 or so nuts. Rich in oils and carbohydrates, the nuts were a favourite source of food for the Indigenous peoples of Southeast Queensland. The nuts could be eaten fresh or roasted and ground into flour.

Some groups preserved the nuts by burying them in the wet sand next to creeks and streams, where, according to the writer Archibald Meston, they gradually acquired the aroma of rotting onions.

Bunya nuts were harvested by climbing the trees using a length of vine which was looped around the tree and the climber's waist. Notches were also cut into the trunk to provide foot and arm holds.

Cutting the notches into the thick bark of a 50-metre-high tree using a stone hand axe was no mean feat: it required persistence, strength and an excellent sense of balance. Notches cut into the older trees in the Bunya Mountains and Blackall Range can still be seen today. Cones are produced every year by the Bunya Pines but on every third year a bumper harvest of nuts occurs and it was on these years that the Bunya Gatherings took place.

Between the months of December and March, Indigenous groups from across Southeast Queensland would follow the pathways to the Bunya gatherings held at the Bunya Mountains and the Blackall Range to enjoy the ripening nuts.

Brisbane settler Tom Petrie attended a gathering in the 1840s and estimated that some 600 to 700 people had come together from as far away as Wide Bay and the Gold Coast and most areas in between.

The gatherings are mentioned in many of the colonial sources but with the exception of Petrie and some escaped convicts, few white men ever witnessed the event. The first white squatters and pastoralists were forbidden to settle in the areas where the gatherings took place by the colonial government, and cutting down the Bunya Pines was also banned.

The gatherings gave Indigenous groups across the Southeast corner the opportunity to meet, trade and discuss issues.

Disputes and outstanding grudges were resolved through negotiations or ritualised fights. Corroborees were held, with groups sharing and swapping stories and songs to take back home to their own people.

"Kippa" ceremonies in which the young men were initiated were also held. The gatherings were held every three years throughout the 19th Century despite the gradual encroachment of European settlement into the area.

In the end it was the displacement of Indigenous populations of Southeast Queensland caused by the introduction of the Aboriginal reserve system which finally stopped the Bunya gatherings, and the last gathering of any size is believed to have occurred in 1902.

FAIRA Aboriginal Corporation
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