The Gunditjmara or Gunditjamara, also known as Dhauwurd Wurrung, are an Aboriginal people of southwestern Victoria in Australia. They are the Traditional Owners of the areas now encompassing Warrnambool, Port Fairy, Woolsthorpe and Portland. Their Country includes much of the Budj Bim heritage areas. The Kerrup Jmara (Kerrupjmara, Kerrup-Jmara) are a clan of the Gunditjmara, whose traditional lands are around Lake Condah. The Koroitgundidj (Koroit gundidj) are another clan group, whose lands are around Tower Hill.
The Gunditjmara are famous for their extensive landscape engineering prowess shown in constructing kilometres of eel aquaculture channels, holding ponds, and fish traps in and around Budj Bim.
The Gunditjmara are famously known as the Fighting Gunditjmara because of their extensive resistance against British invasion of their Country during the Eumeralla Wars.
Name Gunditjmara is formed from two morphemes: Gunditj, a suffix denoting belonging to a particular group or locality, and the noun mara, meaning "man".
Language
The Dhauwurd wurrung language is a term used for a group of languages spoken by various groups of the Gunditjmara people. Different linguists have identified different groupings of lects and languages (see the main article for details), and the whole group is also sometimes referred to as the Gunditjmara language or the Warrnambool language. Some of the major languages or dialects often grouped under these names were:
Keerray Woorroong (Girai Wurrung, Kirrae wuurong, Kiriwurrung, etc.) is regarded by the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages as a separate language; it is of the Girai wurrung people. Gadubanud (Katubanut), also Yarro waetch, was spoken by a group known as the Gadubanud, of the Cape Otway area; Barry Blake regards this as a dialect of the Warrnambool language, but Krishna-Pillay does not. Djargurd Wurrong (Warn tallin, Warn thalayn,) was the language of the Djargurd Wurrong people.
Country
Gunditjmara territories extend over an estimated . The western boundaries are around Cape Bridgewater and Lake Condah. Northwards they reach Caramut and Hamilton. Their eastern boundaries lay around the Hopkins River. Their neighbours to the west are the Buandig people, to the north the Jardwadjali and Djab wurrung peoples, and in the east the Girai wurrung people. Early colonists remarked on the richness of the game to be found from the Eumerella Creek down to the coast.
Culture The way of life of the Aboriginal people of Western Victoria differed from other Aboriginal Victorians in several respects. Because of the colder houses, they made, wore, and used as blankets, rugs of possum and kangaroo. Possum-skin cloaks, used by Gunditjmara and other peoples of the south-east, were made sewn with string, and worn for warmth, used to carry babies on their backs, as drums in ceremony and as a burial cloak. They are still made today as part of revitalisation of culture and as an instrument for healing.
They also built huts from wood and local basalt (known as bluestone), with roofs made of turf and branches. Stone tools were used for cutting, and are held in collections across Victoria today. The women used digging sticks, also known as yam sticks, for digging yams, goannas, ants and other foods out of the ground, as well as for defence, for settling disputes and for punishment purposes as part of customary law.
Dreaming
The Gunditjmara believe that the landscape's features mark out the traces of a creator, Budj Bim (meaning "High Head"), who emerged in the form of the volcano previously called Mount Eccles. In a spate of eruption, the lava flows, constituting his blood and teeth, spilled over the landscape, fashioning its wetlands. "High Head" still refers to the crater's brow, which can be accessed only by Gunditjmara men wearing special emu-feather footwear. Opposite, beyond the coastline, the island they call Deen Maar/Dhinmar held special value for its burial associations. Rocks on the mainland shore facing the island contain a cave, known as Tarn wirrung ("road of the spirits"), which is thought of as the mouth of a passage linking the mainland and the island.
In Gunditjmara funeral rites, bodies are enfolded in grass bundles and interred with their heads pointing to the island, with an apotropaic firebrand of native cherry wood. If grass was thereafter found outside the mouth of Tarn wirrung, it was regarded as evidence that the good spirit Puit puit chepetch had conveyed the corpse via the subterranean passage to the island, while guiding its spirit to the realm of the clouds. If the burial coincided with the appearance of a meteor, this was read as proof that the being in transit to the heavens had been furnished with fire. If grass was found at the cave when no one had been buried, then it was thought it showed someone had been murdered, and the cave could not be approached until the grass had been dispersed.
Social organisation The Gunditjmara were divided into 59 clans, each with its headmen (wungit), a role passed on by hereditary transmission. They spoke distinct dialects, not all of them mutually intelligible, with the three main hordes located around Lake Condah, Port Fairy and Woolsthorpe respectively. The Gunditjmara groups are divided into two moieties, respectively the grugidj (sulphur-crested cockatoo or long-billed corella) and the gabadj (red-tailed black cockatoo, the latter once thriving in buloke woodlands, now mainly cleared.
According to Alfred William Howitt, they had four sections, which however did not affect marriage rules: kerup (water) boom (mountain) direk (swamp) gilger (river)
However these terms refer to 4 of the 58 clans.
Descent was matrilineal.
Clans The following is a list of the Gunditjmara clans (conedeet), taken from that in Ian D. Clark's work. No Clan name Approximate location 1 Art gundidj Tarrone station, near Moyne Swamp 2 Ballumin gundidj unknown 3 Bate gundidj Junction of Stokes, Crawford and Glenelg Rivers 4 Biteboren gundidj Grasmere station 5 Bokerer gundidj Glenelg River 6 Bome gundidj unknown 7 Bonedol gundidj Ponedol Hills 8 Can can corro gundidj south-southeast of Mount Rouse 9 Carnbul gundidj southwest of Tahara station 10 Cart gundidj Mount Clay 11Cartcorang gundidj Lake Cartcorang 12 Corry gundidj unknown 13Cupponenet gundidj Mount Chaucer 14 Dandeyallum Portland Bay 15 Direk gundidj Condah Swamp 16 Gilgar gundidj Darlots Creek 17 Kerup gundidj (aka Kerrup Jmara) Lake Condah 18 Kilcarer gundidj Convincing Ground 19 Koroit gundidj Tower Hill 20 Lay gundidj mallo unknown 21 Mallun gundidj Griffiths Island 22 Meen gundidj unknown 23 Mendeet gundidj marayn unknown 24 Moonwer gundidj near Sisters Point, southwest of Killarney 25 Moperer gundidj Spring Creek 26 Mordoneneet gundidj southwest or west-southwest of Mount Rouse 27 Morro gundidj south of Mount Rouse 28 Mum keelunk gundidj Boodcarra Lake, west of Goose Lagoon 29 Mumdorrong gundidj Marm reserve, south of Lake Wangoom 30 Narcurrer gundidj southwest of Crawford River 31 Nartitbeer gundidj Dunmore station 32 Net net yune gundidj southeast of Crawford River 33 Nillan gundidj south-southwest of Mount Napier 34Omebegare rege gundidj junction of Merri River and Spring Creek 35 Pallapnue gundidj Their clan head was Koort Kirrup (1840), Stokes River 36 Peerracer unknown 37 Ponungdeet gundidj junction of Glenelg and Stokes Rivers 38Pyipgil gundidj Port Fairy townsite 39 Tarrerwung gundidj mouth of Glenelg River. Clan head Mingbum (1840) 40 Tarerer gundidj Tarerer (Kellys Swamp), a swamp between Tower Hill and Merri River 41 Tarngonene wurrer gundidj Surrey River 42Teerar gundidj southeast of Spring Creek station 43Tolite gundidj unknown 44 Tone gundidj near Hopkins River 45Ure gundidj Portland township 46 Wane gundidj Grasmere station 47 Wanedeet gundidj Tahara and Murndal stations 48 Warerangur gundidj Aringa station 49 Waywac gundidj southwest of Mount Rouse 50 Weereweerip gundidj east of Eumeralla River 51 Woortenwan unknown 52Worcarre gundidj northeast of the head of Stokes River 53 Worerome killink gundidj Macarthur 54 Worn gundidj west of Mount Warrnambool 55 Yallo gundidj junction of Crawford and Glenelg Rivers 56 Yambeet gundidj Yambuk station 57 Yarrer gundidj between Campbell's Merri River station and Allandale station 58 Yiyar gundidj Mount Eckersley. 59 Yowen (Yowenillum/ Tarrone) gundidj Moyne River
Economy
The Gunditjmara are traditionally river and lake people, with Framlingham Forest, Lake Condah and the surrounding river systems being of great importance to them economically and spiritually. Numerous distinct structures, extending over of the landscape, are employed for the purpose of catching short-finned eels, the staple of the Gunditjmara diet. These include stone races, canals, traps, stone walls, stone house sites and stone cairns. Some of the groundwork is older than the Egyptian pyramids. A controversy exists concerning the extent to which these features are the results of natural environmental processes or cultural modifications of the landscape by Indigenous people. Peter Coutts and others argued, in a work entitled Aboriginal Engineers of the Western District, Victoria, that numerous features show the handiwork of Aboriginal landscaping for economic purposes. This thesis was challenged as a mythical "romancing of the landscape" by Anne Clarke, one that confused natural processes with socially crafted infrastructure. However, fresh archaeological work by Heather Builth led to her contending that they had a sophisticated system of aquaculture and eel farming. They built stone dams to hold the water in these swampy volcanic areas, especially the area comprising the lava flow of the Budj Bim volcano, creating ponds and wetlands in which they harvested short-finned eels (kuyang or more commonly kooyang).
The Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape, which includes both the Tyrendarra Area and the Mt Eccles – Lake Condah Area, comprising Budj Bim National Park (formerly Mt Eccles National Park), Stones State Faunal Reserve, Muldoons Aboriginal Land, Allambie Aboriginal Land and Condah Mission) was added to the National Heritage List on 20 July 2004, under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
Several designated areas comprising the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019. In the wake of the burning of some 7,000 hectares of bushland around Lake Condah and in the Budj Bim National Park, further channel structures came to light.
They also created channels linking these wetlands. These channels contained weirs with large woven baskets made by women to cull mature eels. Professor Peter Kershaw, noted palynologist at Monash University, as cited by Bruce Pascoe in his best-selling work Dark Emu, found evidence of a sudden change in vegetation consistent with an artificial ponding system, and initial radiocarbon dating of the soil samples suggests the ponds were created up to 8,000 years ago.
The eels were prepared by smoking them with burning leaves from Australian blackwood. The coastal clans, like other tribes on the south-west coast, according to an early colonist, Thomas Browne, had a rich fish diet, which included whale (cunderbul) flesh.
History