Gundagai lore is associated with Gundagai, Australia, a place of considerable reputed Aboriginal cultural significance, with both archaeological sites and anthropological associations related to sacred and spiritual beliefs of the local clan group and wider cultural associations.
The Gundagai area is part of the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri speaking people before and post European settlement, and also holds national significance to Indigenous Australians. The floodplains of the Murrumbidgee below the present town of Gundagai were a frequent meeting place of Wiradjuri speaking people from nearby regions. One indication of the ancient, sacred cultural landscape that is North Gundagai is the bora ring that has been identified close to town.
The location of Gundagai on a sizeable prehistoric highway, (the Murrumbidgee River), along with the significant and sacred Aboriginal ceremonial ground across all of North Gundagai, and other ancient archaeology, indicates it would have been an important ceremonial, mining, manufacturing and trading place for Aboriginal people before the arrival of the Europeans.Kabaila, P. (2005), 'High Country Footprints: Aboriginal pathways and movement in the high country of southeastern Australia: Recognising the ancient paths beside modern highways', Pirion Publishing Canberra As with all ancient sacred places, particularly within still continuing Australian Aboriginal culture, the sacredness of Gundagai's amazing Australian Aboriginal cultural landscape continues despite colonial and later intrusion.
Gundagai Aboriginal elders, Jimmy Clements and John Noble, attended the 1927 opening of the new Federal Parliament House in Canberra by the then-Duke of York. Jimmy Clements also known as King Billy whose traditional name was 'Yangar', walked forward to respectfully salute the Duke and Duchess of York, and after that the two elders were formally presented to the royal couple as prominent citizens of Australia.
Australian dialogue meeting Aboriginal leaders Pat Dodson and Noel Pearson; the former Chief of the Australian Army and Governor of Western Australia, Lieutenant General John Sanderson; and current Australian business leaders, met at a remote property on the Murrumbidgee River near Gundagai in September 2008 on the first stages of an Australian Dialogue to promote constitutional reform and structural change for Indigenous Australian people. Galarrwuy Yunupingu, Northern Territory Indigenous leader, could not be at the gathering of esteemed senior Australians but was kept informed of the progress of talks.Rintoul, S. 12 September 2008 'Dialogue gets under way at indigenous leaders' retreat' The Australian, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24332900-5013172,00.html
Natural phenomena A feeling of awe and reverence for that Almighty power that formed the universe was had in Gundagai at the appearance of the comet on Saturday 21 December 1844. In 1859 the 'Aurora Australis' interfered with the operation of the Gundagai electric telegraph. So great can be some rainfall downpours at Gundagai that old mining dams have been known to fill and burst. A meteor seen at Gundagai on New Year's Day, 1876 was reported to have lit up the streets as though with magnesium wire, and over four inches of rain fell in two hours during a dreadful storm at Gundagai in 1885. Very deep snowfalls and severe weather were experienced in 1899.
Similar to other inland areas in Australia, the Gundagai area has often been visited by tornadoes, particularly in dry times. There has also been numerous reports of earth tremors rattling through Gundagai since European settlement.
Struck by lightning During a thunderstorm near Gundagai in 1876, an electric fire-ball was seen to issue from the clouds, strike the earth, and explode with a loud noise, singeing Constable Macalister's hair and whiskers, and leaving a blue mark on his side. A terrific thunderstorm at Gundagai in March 1877 set fire to the inside of Armour's house. In November 1899, a man named Caigan was struck by lightning and killed as he sheltered in a hollow log. A boy, Patrick Vaughan, was struck by lightning in October 1904 and rendered unconscious for a long time. Two horses were struck by lightning in 1904 and one horse died. A few weeks later two boys were struck by lightning as they hid under a bullock hide strung over a wire fence. The electric charge travelled along the fence wire. In 1938 two dead drovers were found under a tree south of Gundagai, again the victims of lightning. Lightning killed a horse in 1946 but the rider escaped with her life though somewhat injured. A bushfire that caused a lot of damage was started near Gundagai in February 1906 after lightning hit a tree. John Bloomquist, who was camped in a hollow tree on the Gundagai Golf links, was horribly burned and died when the tree was struck by lightning in 1932. There has been other victims of lightning in the Gundagai area due to the ferocity of thunderstorms that can happen locally.
Etymology and dindsenchas Some believe the name 'Gundagai' derives from the word 'Gundagair', an 1838 pastoral run in the name of William HutchinsonRJE Gormly Index, Letter from the Deputy Surveyor-General, 22 January 1838, in 'Gundagai A Track Winding Back', Cliff Butcher, 2002, A.C. Butcher, Gundagai, p.11 to the immediate north of current day Gundagai. 'Gair' was recorded at Yass in 1836 by George Bennett (naturalist) and means 'bird', as in budgerigar or good bird. In that context 'Gundagai' means place of birds but that placename may refer to the area to the north of Gundagai not to Gundagai town. The word 'Gundagai' is also said to mean cut with a hand-axe behind the knee. Combining the two meanings results in the place of birds near where there is a large bend in the Murrumbidgee River that was caused by a cut in the back of the knee. This meaning presupposes that for there to be a knee there is a leg and a body which there is.
There is a large anthropomorphic figure in the landscape at Gundagai.easily viewed on any map of the area e.g. Tumut Geological Series Sheet 8527, Edition 1, 1990, Department of Minerals and Energy under the authority of the Minister for Minerals and Energy, 1990. The figure has a kangaroo or dog-like head and is several kilometres in length. It has hindquarters similar to that of an emu but with a long tail and it appears to be sitting on a bend in the river that has a box shape. The image faces to the west and its head is near the Dog on the Tuckerbox area at Gundagai. This primary landscape figure marked out by the course of the Murrumbidgee River at Gundagai, is replicated in some Sydney Rock Engravings and recorded in local Aboriginal cultural heritage. The 'Gundagai' placename meaning further refers to the reason for the bend in the Murrumbidgee River near the Gundagai showground at Gundagai and to the mythological landscape epic at Gundagai. Bunyips, understood to be where streams flood out of their usual channel in wet seasons flooding surrounding land but also drowning anyone caught on the wrong side of them, are recorded on the Gundagai floodplain; opposite 'Kimo'; and at the junction of the Tumut and Murrumbidgee rivers.identified in Parkes, W. (1952) correspondence between Tindale, Parkes and Hancock, Noel Butlin Archives Centre, ANU Manuscript Collection, D/162, p.96 The Kimo bunyip is accompanied by a large slash in the earth's mantle out of which the 'Jindalee Volcanics' extruded.Geological Series Sheet 8527 (Edition 1)1990, Australia 1:100,000, Tumut Mineralogical Map.
The area is also identified as Jones Creek diorite. 'Kimo' is 'Mt Kimo', named for one of the Nereids, (Nereids, Cymatolege or 'Kymo''Mythagora' ), that occupies the midpoint of the 'Kimo Range', facing Gundagai High School. 'Kimo' is also known as Nargun. Charles Sturt in Chapter Two of his Murrumbidgee exploration journal,Sturt, C., Two expeditions into the interior of southern Australia during the years 1828,1829,1830,1831 Chapter Two, University of South Australia, ebooks, Available [online] http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/sturt/charles/s93t/ likened the 'verdant' Gundagai valley as having Diana of Nemi site parallels as recorded in James George Frazer's 'The Golden Bough',Frazer, J.G. (1990), The Golden Bough The Classic Study in Magic and Religion, Macmillan Press Ltd, London, Melbourne, pp. 139–142, 161–167 when Sturt journeyed through the Gundagai area in 1829–1830. Mount Minerva is the old name for what today is the hill known as 'Minjary'.
Oak groves and muses featured in some succeeding cultural depictions of Gundagai no doubt assigned by early settlers who had received the benefits of an education in the classics, such as Charles Tompson, claimed to be Australia's first published native-born poet and whose father had possession of a large tract of land at Gundagai in the 1830s; and James Macarthur son of John Macarthur, Australian wool pioneer, who met up with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in EuropeMacarthur, J. 1828, Interview with Goethe, p.181, James Macarthur, in 'Quadrant Volume 12', 1968, H.R. Krygier on behalf of the Australian Committee for Cultural Freedom, 1968, Australian Committee for Cultural Freedom, Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, p.381 and who with his brother William Macarthur had possession of Nangus Station at Nangus, Gundagai. Goethe was one of the key figures of Classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. One pastoral holding on the western side of North Gundagai was named 'Jarno'. Jarno is a character in Goethe's, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, a German response to the dramas of William Shakespeare.
Gundagai also has a 'Shakespeare Terrace' that runs along the Murrumbidgee floodplain below the town that may or may not refer to the amazing grand theatre corroborees that happened in that area, eagerly shared in the 1830s for the benefit of overlanders and travellers; or in reference to several or all works of Shakespeare. Placenames such as that of Virgil Street that ascends Gundagai's Mount Parnassus lead to sites in the local landscape that for example invoke Virgil's 'Aeneid', viz ... there the fearsome cavern of the awesome Sybil lies, Whence came her prophecies. The name 'Warramore', is given for Stuckey's Station in 1836 at today's Gundagai.Horton, J., (1838), 'Six Months in South Australia: Ride of Six Hundred Miles From Sydney to Melbourne Through the District of Illawarra', J. Cross, London, pp. 175–194. Available [online] http://www.ozhistorymine.com/html/t__horton_james__1838.html 'Warramore' is linked to 'Warrawen', which is the large cut in the western side of the Monaro Plateau from near which western travelling geological fault lines begin, and 'Warragong', which is the section of the beginning of the Australian Alps in the Gundagai region upon which snow sometimes falls. The junction of the Murrumbidgee and Tumut Rivers is named 'Bewuck' to note the numerous Murray cod found in that area.
George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of Aborigines in Port Phillip, commented that Gundagai was remarkable for its nomenclature when passing through the town in 1844.George Augustus Robinson 'Report of a Journey of two thousand two hundred miles to the Tribes of the Coast and Eastern Interior during the year 1844', ca.1844, MLMSS 7335, State Library of NSW, Available [online] http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2010/D04795/a2078.pdf