Special edition: On the Bunya Trail
'Good morning. I am very pleased to be here to discuss the Bunya Mountains with you.
The Bunya Mountains, that means our Mothers' breast - Boobarran Ngummin. This is a very sacred place. To us it is equal in status to Uluru. To all the tribes of South-East Queensland and Northern New South Wales it has been very significant, in fact for thousands of years, perhaps 60,000 years and that's a long, long time. Our people would gather at the Bunya Mountains from these areas. It is very important that we get the right perspective on these gatherings. Some people think, it was just to gorge on bunya nuts. No, it was very deeply spiritual arousing of ceremony. We went to suck the breast of our Mother, who gave us this, the spirituality that was so intense that it was a part of our bearing in this country, our Mother Australia, the Earth. We 'are sucking the breast, sucking the milk, the bunya nut, from her. All around the Bunya Mountains is very, very spiritual country. There are indicators speaking to Murris, telling them where to go, what to do, what ceremonies to perform. Southwest of the Bunya Mountains is where spiritu~l stones to make axes, knives, whatever were found, all from specific areas. I was just up there for the last month rejuvenating.' (Introduction)
'Idyllic accounts of South-East Queensland's triennial bunya festivals - invariably written by Europeans - seem to float like beckoning mirages above a relative historiographical desert. The story of the bunya gatherings in the coastal Blackall Ranges or in the Bunya Mountains, at the north-eastern periphery of the Darling Downs, is largely cut adrift from the intricate race relations history of these districts, its aura of ‘romantic reminiscence’ conveniently unsullied by surrounding patterns of colonialism, racism and violence which punctuate the extended process of European intrusion and displacement.'
Source: Abstract.
'Bunya Pine Tree
Aesthetic visual forms. Breezed crown;' (Extract)
