Jarowair

The Jarowair are an indigenous Australian people of the Darling Downs area of Queensland.

Country

Norman Tindale estimated Jarowair traditional lands to have encompassed approximately 1,000 square miles (2,600 km2). They were concentrated from the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range around Crows Nest to Dalby. Their northern confines were at Bell in the Bunya Mountains, while their southern flank ended at around Oakey.[1]

Gummingurru ceremonial site

The Jarowair maintained an important ceremonial site, near the present-day town of Meringandan, north of Toowomba and close to the Bunya mountains. It was on one of the major routes employed by many Aboriginal tribes to the south and southeast to participate in the triennial bunya nut feast.

Gummingurru extends over 5 hectares and the site and surrounding land was taken over by the first settler in the area, James Benjamin Jinks, in 1871, and it was his great-great-grandson, Ben Gilbert, who reported the existence of the monumental configuration of assembled stones on the property.[2] The Jarowair regard Gilbert as an authority because, while most of them were expelled, one elder, Bunda, remained whom Gilbert befriended, to the point that he became Bunda's classificatory brother. and was entrusted by the latter with traditional lore regarding what turned out to be Queensland's major sacred Bora ceremonial ground.

The structure of circles includes several totemic designs, of a turtle (or tortoise), an imposing figure of a carpet snake and an emu, a bunya nut orientated towards the mountains from where the aborigines would gather it.[3]

History

The Jarowair were rapidly dispossessed of their lands in the wake of the large colonial push to take over their territory for pastoral stations in the early 1840s.[4] By the early 20th century the Queensland government relocated the Jarowair to Cherbourg.[5] As late as the 1950s most of them were forcibly removed offshore to Fraser Island, and Palm Island.[6]

Alternative names

  • Yarrowair, Yarow-wair, Yarrow Wair.[1]

Notes

    Citations

    Sources

    • Evans, Raymond (2007). A History of Queensland. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521876926.
    • Jones, Janice K.; Moodie, Donna; Hobson, Nicola (2014). "Dinawan Dreeaming:Seeing the Darnmess of the Stars". In Jones, Janice K. Weaving Words: Personal and Professional Transformation through Writing as Research. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 81–101. ISBN 978-1-443-86280-6.
    • Ross, Anne (March 2008). "Managing Meaning at an Ancient Site in the 21st Century: The Gummingurru AboriginalStone Arrangement on the Darling Downs, Southern Queensland". Oceania. 78 (1): 91–108. JSTOR 40495553.
    • Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Jarowair (QLD)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University Press.
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