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This article is for the Indigenous Australian group. For their language, see Turrbal language.

The Turrbal are an Australian Aboriginal nation, descendants of the original owners and custodians of the region of present-day Brisbane, Queensland. The name primarily referred to the dialect they spoke, the tribe itself being alternatively called Mianjin/Meanjin.

Language

Turrbal is one of 4 dialects of the Durubalic branch of the Pama-Nyungan languages. Turrbal was spoken from Gold Creek and Moggill, north as far as North Pine, and south to the Logan River. Tom Petrie, son of one of the founding families of the Birsbane area settlements, grew up among the Turrbal, and mastered the language and the contiguous dialects from an early age.

Country

The Turrbal were a horde of the Jagera people whose traditional lands and hunting grounds, extended over some 1,300 sq. miles and lay around the Brisbane River, stretching from the Cleveland shore area of Moreton Bay, and running inland as far as the Great Dividing Range about Gatton; north to near Esk. The Turrbal horde itself was located specifically in what is now called the Brisbane CBD, the name for which was Mianjin.Neighboring Aboriginal nations include the Kabi and Wakka Wakka to the north, the Dalla to the northwest and the Ngugi of Bribie Island. Despite collective title to a stretch of land, the Turrbal like many tribes permitted private ownership of specific sections of land, down to recognizing personal possession of parts of a river or even of trees and shrubs. Petrie describes the situation in the following words:

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 amula), dulandella (Persoonia Sp.), midyim (Myrtus tenuifolia), 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 distinct birds. Menfolk all came from the billing (a small house bat). Women in turn had their descent from a wamankan(night-hawk). 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 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".

Culture and custom

Thomas Petrie was a Scottish Australian explorer who grew up alongside Turrbal children, and learned to speak Turrbal. His memoirs describe the Turrbal people's integrity, generosity, friendliness and physical prowess. Petrie said the Turrbal welcomed visitors into their camp by sitting down together, looking at each other, and then crying and wailing together. Petrie wrote of the Turrbal's property customs:

Hunting economy

The Turrbal exploited a large range of local species of animals and insects as part of their daily cuisine. List of bats of Australia often sought goanna (magil) eggs, which could be found near ant nests in soft soil. They would hunt for echnidnas (kaggarr) by tracking their scratch marks in the ground; as well as providing food, the kaggarr's spines would sometimes be used for piercing cloth. The Turrbal would catch land tortoises (binkin) in the swamps of New Farm with nets or by hand. The tortoises were cooked whole lying on their backs, with the shell acting as a bowl. Due to the presence of binkin, the Turrbal called New Farm Binkenba. This name was later corrupted and given to Pinkenba, which is further down the river. The Turrball would hunt turtles (bowaiya) at Redcliffe on canoes, by diving in to catch them by hand. The Turrbal would occasionally hunt other marine animals, such as dugongs (yangon), porpoises (talobilla), tailor fish (punba), and mullet (andakal).

Notes and references

Explanatory notes

1. Among the natives of Burnett, Mary and Dawson rivers, the common bat, deering, was the friend of all the men, while a small owl or night hawk, boorookapkap, was the friend of the women. T. Petrie reports that the blacks of Brisbane river believe that the bat, there called billing, made all their menfolk, and that the wamankan, or night hawk, made the women. In 1834, Rev L. E. Threlkeld reported that the tribe at Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, had a belief that a certain small bird was the first maker of women, and that the bat was venerated on the same grounds by the men.J. Dawson in 1881, describing the customs and beliefs of the Aborigines of western Victoria, states that the common bat belongs to the men, and the fern owl to the women.'

Notes

1. Dixon 2002, p. xxxiv.
2. ^ Petrie & Petrie 1904, pp. 4–5.
3. Tindale 1974.
4. Connors 2015, p. 21.
5. Petrie & Petrie 1904, p. 117.
6. Petrie & Petrie 1904, p. 62.
7. Mathews 1910, p. 47.
8. Evans 1992, p. 12.
9. Turrbal Association (1998). An Indigenous History of Waterworks Road, Brisbane. Ann Wallin & Associates.
10. Cite error: The named reference turrbal was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
11. "Place name details: Woolloongabba (entry 44358)". Queensland Place Names. Queensland Government. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
12. "History of Woolloongabba". ourbrisbane.com. Archived from the original on 7 June 2011. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
13. "Place name details: Toowong (entry 47847)". Queensland Place Names. Queensland Government. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
14. "Place name details: Bulimba (entry 42567)". Queensland Place Names. Queensland Government. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
15. "Place name details: Indooroopilly (entry 16663)". Queensland Place Names. Queensland Government. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
16. "Place name details: Enoggera (entry 41374)". Queensland Place Names. Queensland Government. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
17. Watson, Frederick James (1944). Vocabularies of Four Representative Tribes of South Eastern Queensland. Brisbane: Royal Geographical Society of Australasia.
18. Petrie, C. C.; Petrie, T. (January 1975). Tom Petrie's Reminiscences of Early Queensland. Hawthorn, Victoria: Lloyd O'Neil Pty Ltd. ISBN 9780855583729. Retrieved 7 August 2014.
19. Petrie & Petrie 1904, pp. 65–90.

References

• Connors, Libby (2015). Warrior:A legendary leader's dramatic life and violent death on the colonial frontier. Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-1-760-11048-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Dixon, Robert M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-47378-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Evans, Raymond (1992). "The mogwi take mi-an-jin:Race relations and the Moreton Bay penal settlement 1824-42". In Fisher, Rod (ed.). Brisbane: The Aboriginal presence,1824-1860. The Brisbane History Group Papers. pp. 7–30. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Mathews, R. H. (1910). "Die Bundandaba-Zeremonie in Queensland' (The Bundandaba Ceremony of Initiation in Queensland)". 40. Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft: 44–47. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Petrie, Tom; Petrie, Constance Campbell (1904). Tom Petrie's reminiscences of early Queensland (PDF). Brisbane: Watson, Ferguson & Co. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Steele, John Gladstone (2015). Aboriginal Pathways: in Southeast Queensland and the Richmond River. University of Queensland Press. ISBN 978-0-702-25742-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Tindale, Norman (1974). Aboriginal Tribes of Australia, Jagara (QLD). Australian National University Press. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

• Aboriginal peoples of Queensland
• Brisbane