Bundaberg

Bundaberg is a city in Queensland, Australia. It is part of the local government area of the Bundaberg Region and is a major centre within Queensland's broader Wide Bay-Burnett geographical region. The city is on the Burnett River, approximately north of the state capital, Brisbane and inland from the coast.

The first Europeans in the area, were timbergetters and farmers who arrived in 1867. The town was surveyed in 1870 and by 1881 it was gazetted as a municipality. It grew rapidly into a town by 1902 and a city by 1913.

Etymology

The city name is thought to be an artificial combination of bunda, the Kabi Aboriginal word denoting important man and the German suffix berg indicating mountain. The city is colloquially known as "Bundy".

History

The local Aboriginal group is the Kalki people the inhabitants of the region which stretched from the Burrum river in the south to the Baffle creek in the north who were part of the Kabi Language Group. (Edward Curr 1886).

Tha first white man to visit the region was James Davis an escaped convict from the Moreton Bay Penal settlement in 1830. Davis was referred to as Durrumboi by the local Kabi people. (Rev Dunmore Lang 1861, William Ridley 1866). Another man named Alfred Dale Edwards was adopted into the Kalkie speaking clan Yongkonu (Thyeebalang Roth 1910, Archibald Meston 1892) and was given the moiety name Bunda which was part of the four class matrilineal (female descent) moiety system used by the Kabi people whose territory spread from the Caboolture river in the south to the Kolan river in the north. The Kabi moiety names were Balgoin, Barang, Bunda, Derwain and Tandor (Durrumboi in Ridley 1866), the phratry names were Kupaiathin and Dilbai. Gooreng (Gurang) and Wakka inland or wa'pa (slow speech) utilised the moiety name Banjurr in Balgoin's stead (Mathew 1910). Bunda was not a clan sub-tribe or tribe only one of the moiety names ( Dr T H May 1892 Brisbane Courier). Kabi headquarters is in Bundaberg (Kamarangan 2012). The boundary between the Wahr and Kalkie peoples of the Kabi tribe is the Burnett River.