Barada people

The Barada people are an Aboriginal Australian people of Central Queensland not far inland from the east coast. Tindale gives Thar-ar-ra-burra and Toolginburra as alternative names.^[1]

Aboriginal peoples of central-eastern Queensland

Country

Barada lands, according to Norman Tindale's estimation, stretched over some 6,500 square kilometres (2,500 sq mi), in the area of the Connors River from Killarney north to Nebo. Their westward extension stops around Bombandy.^[2] Barada country lies between the coastal Koinjmal and the Barna to their west. Their northern borders meet with those of the Wiri.^[3]

Barada people hold Native Title through two groups - the southern Barada Kabalbara and Yetimarala people,^[4][5] and the northern Barada Barna people.^[6]

Social organisation

Barada people, like others of the Mackay area, have two main social divisions, or phratries,^[7] namely the Yangurru and Wudhurru.^[8][9] These classificatory terms are applied not only to the constituent groups, but to all natural phenomena, which are ascribed to either one or the other of the two basic classes.^[a]

• Yangurru are subdivided further into Gurrgila and Gurrgilan (male and female) and Banbai and Banbaiyan.
• The Wudhurru are subdivided into Guburu and Guburuan, masculine and feminine, and Wun.gu and Wun.guan.^[12]

At least two distinct sub-branches or kin groups are said to have formed part of the Barada.

• Thararburra (Thar-ar-ra-burra), centered around Cardowan
• Toolginburra, a name related to their word for "hill", namely tulkun^[2]

Language

Main article: Baradha language

The language spoken by the Barada people was the Barada language, a Maric language of the Pama-Nyungan language family. The language was silenced during the 19th and 20th centuries through the 1897 Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act.^[13]

History of contact

While sailing up Queensland’s east coast, Lieutenant James Cook sighted a group of mountains on the coastal plain of today’s Sunshine Coast, and named them the Glass House Mountains after the glass furnaces in Yorkshire. Aboriginal people had long used this area as a meeting place for ceremonies, trading, and gatherings. Cook first landed in Queensland at Round Hill (now known as Seventeen Seventy) on 24 May 1770.^[14]

The area around Mackay began to be colonised in 1860, and, according to George Bridgeman,

During the eight or ten years which followed, about one-half of the aboriginal population was either shot down by the Native Mounted Police and their officers, or perished from introduced loathsome diseases before unknown.^[15]

Bridgeman named the Barada (Toolginburra) as one of the four Mackay tribes that suffered from this decimation,^[15] part of the Australian frontier wars occurring throughout the colonies. Though the "dispersal" shootings are thought to have accounted for the majority of deaths, a measles epidemic struck the survivors in 1876, drastically reducing their numbers, and, according to one estimation, the remnants of the original people in 1880 amounted to no more than 100 people, with 80 evenly divided between men and women, and the remainder their children.^[12]

Alternative names

• Thar-ar-ra-burra/Tha-ra-ra-burra (horde at Cardowan)
• Toolginburra^[2]

Natural resource management

The Traditional Owner Reference Group consisting of representatives of the Yuwibara, Koinmerburra, Barada Barna, Wiri, Ngaro, and those Gia and Juru people whose lands are within Reef Catchments Mackay Whitsunday Isaac region, helps to support natural resource management and look after the cultural heritage sites in the area.^[16]