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Pigeon House Mountain and the

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GUESS GUESS

GUESS GUESS

GRAHAM SIMS reviews a unique spot on the south coast, with its rich treasure of Aboriginal history and tradition

As good little (Eurocentric) Aussie kids, my generation and earlier ones were taught that Australia was “discovered” by the gallant Englishman, Captain James, Cook, in 1770. This, we now know, is nonsense. It ignores the fact that other explorers and traders from both Europe and South-East Asia, visited our shores long before. We have ample evidence of this. Much more significantly, it ignores the fact that indigenous Aborigines have been here for at least 50 thousand years, with recent indications that it may have been for much longer.

Not only have Aussies tended to be Anglocentric, with many references and deferences to “Mother England”, but we have even tended to be Sydney-centric. After all, the good Captain Cook actually “discovered” Botany Bay and Port Jackson, didn’t he? Much less well-known is the fact that “Sydney” was not the first part of “The Great Southern Land” sighted by Cook and his crew on their voyage up the east coast. In fact, on the NSW south coast, about 300 kilometres south of Sydney, a locally well-known landmark, inland from the towns of Ulladulla and Milton, bears this honour.

On 21 April, 1770, at about 6am, a band of Aborigines from the Walbanda tribe were amazed to see a strange vessel, far larger than any canoe, crewed by “white ghosts” and sailing close to shore. The ship was H.M.S. “Endeavour” and by 7am that same day, its Captain, James Cook, of Yorkshire, had sighted and named “a remarkable peaked hill which resembled a dove-house with a dome on top, and for that reason I named it “Pigeon House” (Mountain). It is believed that this was the very first identifiable feature on the Australian mainland actually sighted and named by Captain Cook.

Pigeon House in 1938: “Then there is the view from the summit of Pigeon House – easily the best cycloramic view I have ever seen. The wild country to the west, miles of coast and estuary to the east - the panoramic photographer’s paradise.”

Pigeon House is but one of many hills (we Aussies do like to call them “mountains”) in the vast, rugged Budawang Ranges, which extends from the Shoalhaven through to Bateman’s Bay and Moruya. (By the way, our “mountains” are so low and flat, precisely because they are so ancient and worn away. The Himalayas, the Alps etc are higher, because they are “younger”.)

The Budawangs may now be relatively well travelled, by farmers, timber-getters, bushwalkers etc, but, long before Cook observed them in 1770, they were intimately familiar to local Aborigines. The earliest confirmed occupied site is a rock shelter on the shores of Burrill Lake, which has been dated at about 20,000 years.

Virtually outside our holiday home, along the edge of the lake, are still to be seen “middens” of clam and oyster shells, gathered and discarded by local Aborigines over many, many years.

Incidentally, some readers may have recognised the name, Burrill Lake, from the recent and potentially catastrophic bush fires which ravaged this scenic area, including to within less than a kilometre from our house.

I noticed that Sydney newsreaders had trouble with how to pronounce “Burrill”. Does the “burr” rhyme with “burrow”, with the stress on the first syllable? When we first began visiting the area, over 35 years ago, we discovered that true locals seemed to pronounce Burrill as “Booreal”, with the stress on the second syllable. No-one seemed to know why, nor did anyone seem to know who “Mr Burrill” was, after whom the lake was presumably named. All they did know was that only ignorant outsiders called it “Burrill” (to rhyme with “Burrow”). And guess what? I think I’ve found the answer.

In an 1834 map of southern NSW, prepared by the NSW Surveyor-General, Sir Thomas Mitchell, appears the word “Bürril” in italics, beside the lake we now know as Burrill Lake. This strongly suggests an Aboriginal word,

There was an Aboriginal term something like “Woolahderra”, and another term “Nulladolla”, both referring to this general area. They supposedly merged into “Ulladulla” ... or did they?

Just to confound the issue, the settlement was once called “Holey Dollar”, because of the local use of this coin. It is easy to see how “Holey Dollar” could be corrupted into “Ulladulla”, giving it an authentic-sounding Aboriginal name.

Isn’t local folklore fascinating?

It’s also interesting that, perhaps because of the hilly and rugged terrain, the local Aborigines used smoke signals to communicate with each other over distance, a custom usually associated with native Americans of “cowboys and Indians” fame.

Although the countryside was rugged and the weather could be extreme, the Aborigines of the south coast had it better than those of the desert inland. The tribes or clans were each quite small and scattered, limited by tribal boundaries and the availability of resources. As with most tribes, their diet was a mixture of yams, tubers, fruits, nuts and berries, gathered by the women, and supplemented by meat (kangaroo, emu, lizards, snakes, fish and shellfish) hunted by the men.

An intriguing part of their diet was the Bogong moth, which matures and emerges in great numbers each summer. The Bogong, a large moth, is rich in fats and proteins and was highly prized. Only men and small children were allowed to eat this delicacy, considered too fattening for the women.

In researching this article, I also discovered an interesting observation, particularly fascinating in the light of the current debate about climate change and its impact on the environment.

It has tended to be the view that, unlike us, native peoples lived “at one” with their environment, and did not change it. This may not necessarily be so. On the south coast, for example, are large “natural” clearings such as Yadboro Flat and Tingha Clearing (now picnic areas within a National Park).

There are indications that the practice of deliberately burning off, traditionally used by the Aborigines over thousands of years, drove the dense rainforest back into deep gullies, allowing

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