Page:Tom Petrie's reminiscences of early Queensland.djvu/35

 CHAPTER II. Bonyi Season on the Blackall Range — Gatherings like Picnics— Born Mimics— " Cry for the Dead " — Treated like a Prince -Caboolture (Kabul-tur) — Superstitions of the Blacks— Climbing the Bonyi — Gathering the Nuts — Number at these Feasts — Their Food while there— Willingness to Share. HAVING given some instances as proof of the ^ statement that the blacks were murderers or quite otherwise, according to the white man's treatment of them, I will pass now to their native customs, and tell you of the "Bon-yi season." " Bon-yi," the native name for the pine, Araucaria Bidwilli, has been wrongly accepted and pronounced bunya. To the blacks it was bon-yi, the " i " being sounded as an " e " in English, "bon-ye." Grandfather (Andrew Petrie) dis- covered this tree, but he gave some specimens to a Mr. Bidwill, who forwarded them to the old country, and hence the tree was named after him, not after the true discoverer. Of this more anon. The bon-yi tree bears huge cones, full of nuts, which the natives are very fond of. Each year the trees will bear a few cones, but it was only in every third year that the great gatherings of the natives took place, for then it was that the trees bore a heavy crop, and the blacks never failed to know the season. These gatherings were really like huge picnics, the aborigines belonging to the district sending messengers out to invite members from other tribes to come and have a feast. Perhaps fifteen would be asked here, and thirty there, and they were mostly young people, who were able and fit to travel. Then these tribes would in turn ask others. For instance, the Bribie blacks (Ngunda tribe) on receiving their invitation would perchance invite the Turrbal people to join them, and the latter would then ask the Logan, or Yaggapal tribe.