Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-23T10:43:45.465Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Assimilating Nature: The Bunya Diaspora

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2016

Anna Haebich
Get access

Extract

Colonizer and colonized, we all inhabit these death-scarred landscapes. We are here by hope, and we are here by violence.

Deborah Bird Rase (1999)

The bunya pine has a special meaning for Queenslanders, being endemic to the Bunya Mountains and Blackall Ranges in the South-East corner of the state, with a small stand in North Queensland. The bunya holds particular significance for local Indigenous peoples. They are bound to the tree through custodial rights and obligations and systems of traditional environmental knowledge that incorporate ‘classification …empirical observations of the local environment… [and] self-management that governs resource use’, built up through generations of interaction with the bunya forests. Indigenous groups celebrated their spiritual links to the bunya pine in large seasonal gatherings where they feasted on its edible nuts and performed ceremonies, adjudicated disputes and traded goods. The bunya's majestic height, striking unique silhouette, dark green foliage, unique botanical features and Indigenous associations held a fascination for colonial artists, natural scientists, entrepreneurs and gardeners. Over the years they assumed custodianship of the bunya pine, assimilating it into Western scientific, economic, legal, horticultural, environmental and symbolic systems, which replaced Indigenous custodial rights, obligations and knowledge. The spectacular bunya gatherings were mythologised in colonial writings as mystical, primeval ceremonies and barbaric rituals. Despite ‘fierce and actively hostile tribal resistance’ to colonisation of their lands, Indigenous groups were progressively driven out of the bunya forests. Empty landscapes left by the retreating forests – victims of timber felling and land clearing – came to symbolise the vanishing ceremonies and dwindling Aboriginal populations of South-East Queensland. While surviving Indigenous groups were swept into centralised reserves and settlements from the late nineteenth century, so too the bunya trees were cordoned off in 1908, for their own protection, in Queensland's second national park at the Bunya Mountains, where they stood ‘like the spirits of the departed original Queenslanders, mourning over the days which are forever gone’.

Type
Special Issue: TROPICAL PLEASURES: A Focus on Queensland Gardens. Papers of the 24th National Australian Garden History Society, Brisbane 11–13 July 2003.
Information
Queensland Review , Volume 10 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Tropical Pleasures: A Focus on Queensland Gardens. Papers of the 24th National Australian Garden History Society, Brisbane 11-13 July 2003. , November 2003 , pp. 47 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 Rose, D. Bird, ‘Indigenous ecologies and an ethic of connection’, Low, N. (ed.) Global Ethics and Environment, (London and New York, Routledge, 1999): 184.Google Scholar

2 Johnson, M. 1992 cited in Fourmile, H., ‘Traditional knowledge and global governance’, in Low, N. (ed.) Global Ethics and Environment, (London and New York: Routledge, 1999): 220.Google Scholar

3 McKay, B. Buckridge, P., ‘Literary imaginings of the bunya’, On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, Haebich, A. (ed.) (2002).Google Scholar

4 Governor Bowen to Colonial Office 1861 cited in Haebich, A., ‘A chronology of the bunya pine’. On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, Haebich, A. (ed.) (2002): 116. B. McKay and P. Buckridge, ‘Literary imaginings of the bunya’, On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, A. Haebich (ed.) (2002).Google Scholar

5 22,500 acres of land in the Bunya Mountains were reserved as a national park in 1908, the second such declaration in Queensland.Google Scholar

6 White, S.A., ‘notes upon the birds observed on the Bunya Mountains and Stradbroke Island’, Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Union, XIX, 1920: 216.Google Scholar

7 I am grateful to Dargavel, John, President of the Australian Forestry Society for suggesting this term.Google Scholar

8 Cooke, G., ‘Representing the Bunya Pine’, On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, Haebich, A. (ed.) (2002): 85.Google Scholar

9 The Project has also published a collection of articles about the bunya pine edited by Anna Haebich, On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, November, 2002. The On the Bunya Trail Project was jointly hosted by the Queensland Studies Centre at Griffith University which promotes research about the state through projects, seminars, conferences and publications, notably the Queensland Review, and Global ArtsLink, the award winning regional art gallery and museum in Ipswich that combines art, social history and new technologies to explore the region. The Project was funded by Queensland Heritage Trails Network, a joint initiative of the Queensland Government and the Commonwealth Government, established in 2000 thorough the Federation Fund and working partnerships with local government authorities and local councils to create and link 43 heritage places celebrating the state's unique history, culture, and natural features.Google Scholar

10 International Dendrochronology symposium, Araucariaceae Symposium, Auckland, March 2002. The papers presented to the symposium are in publication.Google Scholar

11 Huth, J., ‘Introducing the bunya pine’, On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, Haebich, A. (ed.) (2002): 15.Google Scholar

12 Hooker, W. J., ‘Figure and description of a new species of Araucaria’, London Journal of Botany ii (1843): 498–506.Google Scholar

13 Blake, T., ‘This noble tree': J.C. Bidwill and the naming of the bunya pine’, On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, Haebich, A. (ed.) (2002): 44.Google Scholar

14 McKay and Buckridge op. cit.: 66.Google Scholar

15 Parsons, P., ‘A view of Araucaria bidwillii in Tasmania’, paper presented to the International Araucariaceae Symposium, Auckland, New Zealand, 2002. The papers presented to the symposium are in publication.Google Scholar

16 Mabberley, D. J., ‘Bidwill of the bunya-bunya’, Curtis’ Botanical Magazine, 18,1, (2001): 33.Google Scholar

17 Watt, A., ‘Araucarias in Victoria’, paper presented to International Araucariaceae Symposium, Auckland New Zealand, 2002. The papers presented to the symposium are in publication.Google Scholar

18 Cooke op. cit.: 85.Google Scholar

19 Paviour, M., ‘Araucaria cunninhamii and its status in gardens of South-West England’, paper forwarded privately to author.Google Scholar

20 Parsons op. cit.Google Scholar

21 Dargavel, J., ‘More to grief than granite: arboreal remembrance in Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies, 64, 2000.Google Scholar

22 [Canberra tree]Google Scholar

23 Parsons op. cit.Google Scholar

24 Andrews, L., ‘Management of Araucaria and Agathis species in Melbourne’, paper presented to International Araucariaceae Symposium, Auckland, New Zealand, 2002. The papers presented to the symposium are in publication.Google Scholar

25 Andrews op.cit.Google Scholar

26 Subiaco Post, 19/1/2002: 17, 26/1/2002; Dr Joanna Sassoon, private communication.Google Scholar

27 www.waipadc.govt.nz/Pages/General/Press/bunya_jul01.htm.Google Scholar

28 Langton, M., Burning Questions Emerging Environmental Issues for Indigenous Peoples in Northern Australia, (Darwin: Centre for Natural and Cultural Resource Management, Northern Territory University, 1998: 72).Google Scholar

29 Canberra Times, 13/3/2001: 4.Google Scholar

30 Shiva, V., ‘Ecological balance in an era of globalization’, Low, N. (ed.) Global Ethics and Environment, (London and New York, Routledge, 1999): 62–3.Google Scholar

31 Langton op. cit.: 75.Google Scholar

32 The symposium was hosted by the Queensland Studies Centre and Global ArtsLink as part of the On the Bunya Trail Project. The papers were published in A. Haebich (ed.) On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, (2002).Google Scholar

33 Jerome, P., ‘Boobarran Ngummin: the Bunya Mountains’, On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, Haebich, A. (ed.) (2002): 4–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar