Bonyi Season on the Blackall Range-Gatherings like Picnics
Born Mimics
“Cry for the Dead”
Treated like a Prince
Caboolture (Kabul-tur)
Superstitions of the Blacks
Climbing the Bonyi
Gathering the Nuts
Number at these Feasts
Their Food while there
Willingness to Share
Saving given some instances as proof of the statement that the blacks were murderers or quite otherwise, according to the white man’s treatment of them, I will pass now to their native customs, and tell you of the “Bon-yi season.” “Bon-yi,” the native name for the pine, Araucaria Bidwilli, has been wrongly accepted and pronounced bunya. To the blacks it was bon-yi, the “i” being sounded as an “e” in English, “bon-ye.” Grandfather (Andrew Petrie) dis- covered this tree, but he gave some specimens to a Mr. Bidwill, who forwarded them to the old country, and hence the tree was named after him, not after the true discoverer. Of this more anon.
The bon-yi tree bears huge cones, full of nuts, which the natives are very fond of. Each year the trees will bear a few cones, but it was only in every third year that the great gatherings of the natives took place, for then it was that the trees bore a heavy crop, and the blacks never failed to know the season.
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 in 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.
My father was present at one of these feasts when a boy for over a fortnight. He is the only free white man who has ever been present at a bon-yi feast. Two or three convicts in the old days, who escaped and lived afterwards with the blacks-James Davis (” Duramboi “), Bracefield (“Wandi “), and Fahey (“Gilbury “), of course, knew all about it, but they are dead now. Father met the two former after their return to civilization, and he has often had a yarn with the old blacks who belonged to the tribes they had lived with.
In those early days the Blackall Range was spoken of as the Bon-yi Mountains, and it was there that Duramboi and Bracefield joined in the feasts, and there also that Father saw it all. He was only fourteen or fifteen years old at the time, and travelled from Brisbane with a party of about one hundred, counting the women and children. They camped the first night at Bu-yu-ba (shin of leg), the native name for the creek crossing at what is now known as Enoggera.
After the camp fires were made and breakwinds of bushes put up as a protection from the night, the party all had something to eat, then gathered comfortably round the fires, and settled themselves ready for some good old yarns, till sleep would claim them for his own. Tales were told of what forefathers did, how wonderful some of them were in hunting and killing game, also in fighting. The blacks have lively imaginations of what happened years ago, and some of the incidents they remembered of their big fights, etc., were truly marvellous! They are also born mimics, and my father has often felt sore with laughing at the way they would take off people, and strut about, and imitate all sorts of animals.
When aborigines are collected anywhere together, each morning at daylight a great cry arises, breaking through the silence: this is the “cry for the dead.” Imagine it, falling on the stillness after the night! It comes with the dawn and the first call of the birds; as the Australian bush awakens and stirs, so do Australia’s dark children-or, rather they used to, for all is changed now. It must have been weird, that wailing noise and crying; but one could imagine the birds and animals expecting it and listening for it; and the sun in those days would surely have thought something had gone wrong, had there been no great cry to accompany his arising. Whether the dead were the better for the mourn- ing who can say? But they were always faithfully mourned for, each morning, and at dusk each night. It was crying and wailing and cursing all mixed up together, and was kept going for from ten to twenty minutes, such a noise being made that it was scarcely possible to hear oneself speak. Each person vowed vengeance on their relative’s murderer, swearing all the time. To them it was an oath when they called a man “big head,” “swelled body,” “crooked leg,” etc.; and so they cursed and howled away, using all the “oaths” they could think of. There was never a lack of some one to mourn for; so this cry was never omitted, night or morning.
After the dying down of the cry at daybreak, the blacks would have their morning meal, and then, as in the case of this journey to the Bon-yi Mountains, when my father accompanied them, they made ready to move forward on their way. A blackfellow would shout out the name of the place at which they were to meet again that night-this time it happened to be the Pine and off they all went, hunting here and there, catching all sorts of animals, getting wild honey, too, and coming into the appointed place that night laden with spoil. This same thing went on day by day, and Father was treated like a prince among them all. They never failed to make him a humpy for the night, roofed with bark or perhaps grass; while for themselves they didn’t trouble, unless it rained. The third night they camped at Caboolture (Kabul-tur, “place of carpet snakes “), and next day started for the Glasshouse Mountains.
During this journey my father noticed some superstitions of the blacks. For instance, going up the spur of a hill a dog ran through between the legs of a blackfellow, and the man stood stock still and called the dog back, making it return through his legs. When asked why, he said they would both die otherwise. Then, again, they travelled along a footpath, which ran up a ridge, where there was but room to walk one by one, and the white boy noticed a half fallen tree leaning across the way. Coming to the tree, the first blackfellow paused and pulled a bush from the roadside, and, throwing it down on the path, quietly walked round the tree, the rest following him. Father asked the reason, and the man said that if any one walked under that tree his body would swell, and he would die; he also said that he threw the bush down as a warning to the others. My father, of course, boy-like, wished to show there was nothing in all this, and walked assuredly under the tree, drawing attention to the fact that he didn’t die. “Oh, but you are white,” they said.
It was the same thing always with regard to a fence; the aboriginals would never climb through or under a fence, but always over, thinking here too that their body would swell and they would die. In the same way a blackfellow would rather you knocked him down than have you step over him or any of his belongings, because to him it meant death. Supposing a gin stepped over one of them-naughty woman! she would be killed instantly. Father has lain on the ground, and offered to let men, women, and children all step over his body, and if he died they were right in their belief; but, if not, they were wrong. He offered blankets, flour, a tomahawk; but no, nothing would induce them, for they said they did not wish to see him die. As he survived the great ordeal of walking under a tree, because of being a white man, one would think they would risk the other, especially with a promised reward in view. But not they.
Of course, we are speaking of the past; the blacks one sees of late years will go through a fence or under a tree, or any- thing; just as they will smoke or drink spirits. They used to be fine, athletic men, remarkably free from disease, tall, well-made and graceful, with wonderful powers of enjoyment; now they are often miserable, diseased, degraded creatures. The whites have contaminated them.
On the fourth day of this journey, about 4 o’clock, the party arrived near Mooloolah, at a creek with a scrub on it, and all hands fell to making fires for cooking purposes, etc., and they stripped some bark to make a hut (“ngudur”) for their white friend to sleep in, some placing a “pikki” (vessel made from bark) of water ready to his hand, others bringing him yams and honey or anything he fancied to eat. He had a little flour and tea and sugar with him, which the blacks carried, but never touched, leaving them for him. They did not think it worthwhile making huts for themselves for one night, but just camped alongside the fire with opossum rug coverings.
Arriving at the Blackall Range, the party made a halt at the first bon-yi tree they came to, and a blackfellow accompanying them, who belonged to the district, climbed up the tree by means of a vine. When a native wishes to climb a tree that has no lower branches he cuts notches or steps in the trunk as he goes up, ascending with the help of a vine held round the stem. But my father’s experience has been that the blacks would never by any chance cut a bon-yi, affirming that to do so would injure the tree, and they climbed with the vine alone, the rough surface of the tree helping them. This tree they came first upon was a good specimen, 100 feet high before a branch, and when the native climbing could reach a cone he pulled one and opened it with a tomahawk to see if it was all right. (The others said if he did not do this the nuts would be empty and worthless, and Father noticed afterwards that the first cone was always examined before being thrown to the ground.) Then the man called out that all was well, and, throwing down the cone, he broke a branch, and with it poked and knocked off other cones. As they fell to the ground, the blacks assembled below would break them up, and, taking out the nuts, put them in their dilly-bags. Afterwards they went further on, and, camping, made fires to roast the nuts, of which they had a great feed-roasted they were very nice.
Next day they travelled on again, till they came to where the tribes were all assembling from every part of the country, some hailing from the Burnett, Wide Bay, Bundaberg, Mount Perry, Gympie, Bribie, and Frazer Islands, Gayndah, Kilcoy, Mount Brisbane, and Brisbane. When all turned up there numbered between 600 and 700 blacks. According to some people, the numbers would run to thousands at these feasts. That may have been so in other parts of the country, but not there on the Blackall Ranges. Each blackfellow belonging to the district had two or three trees which he considered his own property, and no one else was allowed to climb these trees and gather the cones, though all the guests would be invited to share equally in the eating of the nuts. The trees were handed down from father to son, as it were, and every one, of course, knew who were the owners.
Great times those were, and what lots of fun these children of the woods had in catching paddymelons in the scrub with their nets, also in obtaining other food, of which there was plenty, such as opossums, snakes, and other animals, turkey eggs, wild yams, native figs, and a large white grub, which was found in dead trees. These latter are as thick as one’s finger and about three inches long. They were very plentiful in the scrubs, and the natives knew at a glance where to look for them. They would eat these raw with great relish, as we do an oyster, or they would roast them. Then the young tops of the cabbage tree palm, and other palms which grew there, served as a sort of a vegetable, and were not bad, according to my father. The bon-yi nuts were generally roasted, the blacks preferring them so, but they were also eaten raw.
It will be seen that there was no lack of food of different kinds during a bon-yi feast; the natives did not only live on nuts as some suppose. To them it was a real pleasure getting their food; they were so lighthearted and gay, nothing troubled them; they had no bills to meet or wages. to pay. And there were no missionaries in those days to make them think how bad they were. Whatever their faults Father could not have been treated better, and when they came into camp of an afternoon about four o’clock, from all directions, laden with good things-opossums, carpet snakes, wild turkey eggs, and yams he would get his share of the best-as much as he could eat. The turkey eggs were about the size of a goose egg, and the fresh ones were taken to the white boy, while addled eggs, or those (let me whisper it) with chickens in them, were eaten and relished by the blacks, after being roasted in the hot ashes.
My father always noticed how open-handed and generous the aborigines were. Some of us would do well to learn from them in that respect. If there were unfortunates who had been unlucky in the hunt for food, it made no difference; they did not go without, but shared equally with the others.