This article is about the Indigenous Australian group. For their language, see
Turrbal language.
The Turrbal are an
Aboriginal Australian people from the region of
Brisbane, Queensland. The name primarily refers to the dialect they speak, the tribe itself being alternatively called Mianjin/Meanjin/Meeanjin.[citation needed] Mianjin is also the
Turrbal word for the central Brisbane area.[1] The traditional homelands of the Turrbal stretch from the
North Pine River, south to the
Logan River, and inland as far as
Moggill, a range which includes the city of
Brisbane.[2]
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
Lutheran missionaries to the
Ningy Ningy at what became
Toorbul Point, in the area where they established the
Zion Hill Mission.[3]
The Turrbal people's traditional lands and hunting grounds extended over some 1,300 square miles (3,400 km2) 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.[6][5] The Turrbal mob itself was located specifically in what is now called the
Brisbane CBD, the name for which was Mianjin.[7] Neighbouring Aboriginal nations include the
Gubbi Gubbi and
Wakka Wakka to the north, the
Dalla to the northwest and the
Ngugi of
Moreton 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.[2]
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.[8][a]
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".[9]
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.[10] 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",[11] or from woolloon-gabba meaning "fight talk place".[12]Toowong is derived from tuwong, the onomatopoeic name for the
Pacific koel.[13]Bulimba means "place of the
magpie-lark".[14]Indooroopilly is derived from either nyindurupilli meaning "gully of leeches", or from yindurupilly meaning "gully of running water".[15]Enoggera is a corruption of the words yauar-ngari meaning "song and dance".[16][17]
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.[18]
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.[19]
The
Moreton Bay chesnut (mai),
a root called bundal in Turrbal but more widely known as cunjevoi,
Canavalia Obtusifolia beans, (yugam) and
zamia nuts, 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.[20] 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."[21]
Aside from lizards, two varieties of
goanna were hunted, the larger one being called giwar, while the smaller variety was named barra.[24] The
echidna (kagarr), tortoises (binkin), turtle (bowaiya)[c] also formed part of their diet.[25]
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).[31]
^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.' (
Mathews 1910, p. 47)
^Tortoises were associated with an area of Brisbane, now called
New Farm and formerly called binkinba (place of the land tortoise) (
Petrie & Petrie 1904, p. 82)
"History". Turrbal Aboriginal Nation, Traditional Owners of Meanjin (Brisbane). Archived from
the original on 14 February 2020. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
Watson, Frederick James (1944). Vocabularies of Four Representative Tribes of South Eastern Queensland. Brisbane: Royal Geographical Society of Australasia.