The Turrbal are an Aboriginal Australian people from the area now known as Brisbane. The boundaries of their traditional territory are unclear and linguists are divided over whether they spoke a Turrbal language or a dialect of the Yuggera language. The Turrbal/Yuggera toponym for the central Brisbane area is Meanjin.
Name
The
ethnonym Turrbal is an
exonym which is thought to derive from the root
turr/dhur (bora ring) and -
bal, signifying "those who say
turr or
dhur for a bora ring", rather than using the other tribe's customary term
bool. It was the
toponym used in 1841 by native guides from Nundah who led the group of German
Lutheranism to the
Ningy Ningy at what became
Toorbul Point, in the area where they established the Zion Hill Mission.
Language
Turrbal language is considered either a dialect of the Yuggera language, or a separate language, one of five subgroups of the Durubalic branch of the Pama-Nyungan languages.
Tom Petrie, son of one of the founding families of the Brisbane area settlements, mixed freely with the Turrbal, and mastered the language and the contiguous dialects from an early age. He stated that Turrbal was spoken from Gold Creek and Moggill, north as far as North Pine, and south to the
Logan River. Connors, however, states that the Yaggera (Yuggera) language group spread south of the Brisbane River from the Brisbane River Valley to the present South Bank almost to Morton Bay.
Meanjin (also Meeanjin, Mianjin) is a Turrbal/Yuggera word whose various etymologies suggest a meaning of "spike place" or "tulip wood". It was used for the area now covered by Gardens Point and the Brisbane central business district. The Turrbal called the early Brisbane settlement "Umpi Korrumba" meaning "many houses".
Country
The Turrbal people's traditional lands lay around the
Brisbane River. Tom Petrie stated that their land coincided with the territorial range of their language. Ford and Blake, however, state that the Turrbal and
Jagera people were distinct peoples, the Jagera generally living south of the Brisbane river and the Turrbal mostly living north. The group comprised a number of family clans, such as the Ngundari. Neighbouring Aboriginal peoples include the
Gubbi Gubbi and
Wakka Wakka to the north, the
Dalla people to the northwest and the Quandamooka of Moreton Bay.
At the time of European settlement, the Turrbal comprised local groups each of which had a "head man" and a specific territory. The European names for the locality groups, sometimes called clans, of the Brisbane area include the Duke of York's clan, the North Pine (or Petrie), the Coorpooroo, Chepara, Yerongpan and others.
Despite collective title to a stretch of land, the Turrbal permitted private ownership of specific sections of land. Petrie states:
Though the land belonged to the whole tribe, the head men often spoke of it as theirs. The tribe in general owned the animals and birds on the ground, also roots and nests, but certain men and women owned different fruit or flower-trees and shrubs. For instance, a man could own a bonyi (Araucaria bidwilli) tree, and a woman a minti (Banksia aemula), dulandella (Persoonia Sp.), midyim (Austromyrtus), or dakkabin (Xanthorrhoea aborea) tree. Then a man sometimes owned a portion of the river which was a good fishing spot, and no one else could fish there without his permission.
Mythology
In Turrbal thought, the origins of the division of the sexes was attributed to two nocturnal flying creatures. Menfolk all came from the
billing (a small house bat). Women in turn had their descent from a
wamankan (
Caprimulgiformes). Given their mythic function, they could not be eaten, but capturing and killing them was permitted.
History
The explorer
John Oxley, on first sighting the Turrbal in 1824, called them "about the strongest and best-made muscular men I have seen in any country".
The Turrbal's tracks form the basis of many modern-day roads. Waterworks Road from Ashgrove is built on a Turrbal track that leads to Mount Coot-tha. Turrbal people would go to Mount Coot-tha to collect honey ( ku-ta) from the bees there; it is the place of the honey-bee dreaming. Similarly, Old Northern Road from Everton Hills is built on a Turrbal track that led to the site of a triennial Bunya feast in neighboring Wakka Wakka country.
Many suburbs and places in Brisbane have names derived from Turrbal/Yuggera words. Woolloongabba is derived from either woolloon-capemm meaning "whirling water", or from woolloon-gabba meaning "fight talk place". Toowong is derived from tuwong, the onomatopoeic name for the Pacific koel. Bulimba means "place of the magpie-lark". Indooroopilly is derived from either nyindurupilli meaning "gully of leeches", or from yindurupilly meaning "gully of running water". Enoggera is a corruption of the words yauar-ngari meaning "song and dance".
Hunting and gathering economy
The Turrbal exploited a large range of local species of animals and insects as part of their daily cuisine. These may be divided into sea- and riverine food, mainland victuals, and vegetables.
Vegetables and fruit
-
The Turrbal gathered the pencil yam ( tarm) from scrub borders, where it was often found almost a metre underground.
-
Shoots from the crowns of both (the cabbage-tree palm ( binkar)) and the king palm ( pikki) served as vegetables.
-
A Blechnum species, a swamp fern called bangwal was a delicacy found in abundance, and generally consumed as a bread-like sidedish with fish or meat. a freshwater rush called ( yimbun) was also harvested and once prepared, tasted like arrowroot.
-
The Castanospermum, a root called bundal in Turrbal but more widely known as cunjevoi, Canavalia and Cycas media, though poisonous, were rendered edible by long soaking after the nuts were cracked. They were then roasted. Mai was pounded into a cake, (as were yugam beans, and bundal) and the word was later used to denote European bread. The 1889 book The Useful Native Plants of Australia records that "The seeds are eaten ... after cooking, as they are poisonous in the raw state. Some shipwrecked sailors in Northwest Australia were poisoned by them."
-
Persoonia was relished and eaten raw, as were two varieties of wild fig, called respectively ngoa-nga and nyuta. white myrtle berries ( midyim), located on sandy islands, like the dubbul berry, were much sought after as a sweet. dogwood gum ( denna) was also highly prized.
-
The Pandanus was chewed and sucked.
Meats
-
A variety of snakes were eaten: the carpet snake ( kabul); the Pseudechis; brown snake ( kuralbang) and Acanthophis ( mulunkun).
-
Aside from lizards, two varieties of goanna were hunted, the larger one being called giwar, while the smaller variety was named barra. The echidna ( kagarr), tortoises ( binkin), turtle ( bowaiya) also formed part of their diet.
-
Two varieties of kangaroo and possum were hunted, the groman or old man kangaroo and the murri, and Phalangeridae. Koala were also highly prized.
-
The Squirrel glider, the Sugar glider, the Quoll were eaten, as was the Pteropus while the dingo was not part of their diet, the pups being taken in order to be domesticated.
-
Among the hunted avian species were the scrub turkey ( wargun), emu, Black swan, Anatidae, Buttonquail, parrots ( pillin) and cockatoos ( kaiyar), the latter highly valued for the yellow topknots ( billa billa) employed by men as a ceremonial adornment.
They often sought out goanna ( magil) eggs, which could be found near ant nests in soft soil. The Turrbal would occasionally hunt marine animals, such as dugongs ( yangon), porpoises ( talobilla), tailor fish ( punba), and mullet ( andakal).
Alternative names
Turubul, Turrubul, Turrubal, Terabul, Torbul, Turibul.
Native title
Descendants of both the Turrbal and the Jagera (Yugara) consider themselves traditional custodians of the land over which much of Brisbane is built. Native claim applications were lodged respectively by the Turrbal in 1998 and the Jagera in 2011, and the two separate claims were combined in 2013. In January 2015, Justice Christopher Jessup for the Federal Court of Australia, in
Sandy on behalf of the Yugara People v State of Queensland (No 2), rejected the claims on the basis that under traditional law, which was now lacking, none of the claimants would be considered to have such a land right. The decision was appealed before the full bench of the Federal Court, which on 25 July 2017 rejected both appeals, confirming the 2015 decision that native title does not exist in the greater Brisbane area.
Notable people
-
Daki-Yakka: Daki-Yakka was a leader who succeeded Toorbal, and whom white settlers called "the Duke of York". This nickname survived in the place-name for their camping site, "York's Hollow". The indigenous name for the location was Barrambin and it is now covered by Victoria Park and the Exhibition Ground.
-
Kulkarawa. A young Turrbal woman who was taken from the tribe by an Indian escapee convict. The two survived the capsizing of a stolen boat, and landed up at Noosa Heads where they were looked after by the local tribe. The convict tired of life in the bush and returned to Brisbane, where the Turrbal killed him for taking one of their women without consent. Kulkarawa composed a song expressing her nostalgia for her clan and earlier life, which became popular when it was sung, to a special dance, at a bunya corroboree. She was eventually reunited with her family at Barranbin.
-
Maroochy Barambah is one of the elders of the Turrbal people and is an acclaimed performing artist
See also
Notes
Citations
Sources
Further reading
