Djab Wurrung people
The Djab Wurrung, also spelt Djabwurrung, Tjapwurrung, Tjap Wurrung, or Djapwarrung, people are Aboriginal Australians whose country is the volcanic plains of central Victoria from the Mount William Range of Gariwerd in the west to the Pyrenees range in the east encompassing the Wimmera River flowing north and the headwaters of the Hopkins River flowing south. The towns of Ararat, Stawell and Hamilton are within their territory.
There were 41 Djab Wurrung clans who formed an alliance with the neighbouring Jardwadjali people through intermarriage, shared culture, trade and moiety system before colonisation. Their lands were conquered but never ceded.
Language
Djab Wurrung, meaning "soft language", belongs to the Western branch of the Kulin languages. It is the southernmost language, with Dja Dja Wurrung spoken to the east/southeast, and Jardwadjali spoken in the area from Casterton northwards to Donald.The Djab Wurrung language shares 85 per cent common vocabulary with Jardwadjali, 82 per cent with Wemba Wemba, 66 per cent with Madhi Madhi and 68 per cent with Letji-Letji.
It is believed that the northern Djab Wurrung dialect Knenknen Wurrung was spoken by a distinct group which "occupied a tract of country from east of the Pyrenees and west across northern Gariwerd" before Knenknen wurrung speakers and their country were absorbed into Djab Wurrung territory sometime in the early nineteenth century.
The Tjapwuring word mihirung paringmal has become the vernacular for dromornithids.
Country
The anthropologist Norman Tindale observed that the Djab Wurrung's lands extend over, ranging from Mount Rouse westwards to Hamilton. To the east its boundaries end at the Hopkins River and Wickliffe. The northern boundary lays near Mount William, Stawell, Ararat and the Dividing Range.Parts of Djab Wurrung country include the eastern ranges of Gariwerd and the Grampians National Park. Historian Benjamin Wilkie writes that Gariwerd has been central to Djab Wurrung society and culture, and that their territory extends
from the Serra Range onto the plains to the south and east of the Gariwerd mountains. Along the Serra Range, the Neetsheere balug lived at Mount William, and the Watteneer balug, Yam yam burer balug, Weeripcart balug, Mitteyer balug were nearby. At Mud-dadjug were a group described as the "Mutterchoke gundij" and at Wurgarri, or Mount Sturgeon, near Dunkeld, were the Wurcurri gundij. Djab wurrung country extended south where the Kolorer gundij lived at Mount Rouse and at Hexham were the Buller buller cote gundij. In the west were the Beeripmo balug at Mount Cole, down to the Bulukbar at Lake Bolac. Back towards Gariwerd, Stawell, Great Western, Ararat, and Halls Gap all fell within Djab wurrung country.
Djab Wurrung country also overlaps with parts of the Newer Volcanics Province of south-east Australia. Along with Girai wurrung, Wada wurrung, Gunditjmara, and other western Kulin Aboriginal people, the Djab Wurrung people have oral traditions relating to volcanoes and volcanism. Mount Rouse, near Penshurst, for example, is an ancient volcano on Djab Wurrung country where the Kolorer gundidj clan lived. The Djab Wurrung name for Mount Rouse is Kolorer, which means "lava". Kolorer, kuulor, Kulurr and other derivatives can be found attached to volcanic landscape features across the region.
Society and culture
The Djab Wurrung were once thought to have had at least eleven bands. Now it is believed that at the time of European contact in the middle of the nineteenth century, there were around 41 clans, bands, or local estate groups. These groups shared the Djab Wurrung language but belonged to their own, smaller tracts of land. Each of these groups had a population of about 40 to 60 people. At the time of European colonisation the total Djab Wurrung population is estimated to have been somewhere between 2460 and 4920 individuals.At the time of colonisation, the Djab Wurrung language was passed down through fathers, as was an individual clan or local estate group territorial affiliation. Further to this, Ian D. Clark notes that a two class matrilineal system was recorded and maintained, with descent based on the wirran and grugidj moieties. Grugidj sub-totems included pelican, parrot, mopoke and large kangaroo. Gamadj sub-totems included emu, whip snake, possum, koala, and sparrowhawk. Clans intermarried with the Dja Dja Wurrung, Jardwadjali, Dhauwurd wurrung and Wada wurrung peoples.
Anthropologist Ray Madden has argued that matrilineal social and cultural affiliations became more significant after patrilineal territorial and linguistic affiliations were disrupted by European colonisation and Djab Wurrung people were alienated from their country and language. The effect of this has been an increased emphasis on family relationships, broader landscape connections, and a greater significance for senior women in Djab Wurrung and other western Victorian Aboriginal communities.
Overall, Wilkie says that in Djab Wurrung society, "These forms of social organisation... transcended the local territory, connecting different 'clan' and language groups to others in the wider nation, and enabling people from different language groups and local estates to come together, for example, as seasonal hunting bands." He argues that "this way of organising society and culture linked individuals materially and spiritually to the land, but also to their families and local and regional communities."
Trading networks
Affiliation and co-operation with other western Victorian Aboriginal communities meant that Djab Wurrung people could make the best use of natural resources across the region. Research suggests that the social organisation of Djab Wurrung people was "underlaid by economic considerations. Goods of all kinds were exchanged between individuals and groups so that the diverse resources of south-east Australia could be redistributed as they were needed... economic motivations – access to natural resources – underpinned much social organising between western Victorian Aboriginal groups, it was also the case that the efficient and continued operation of these systems was reliant on the highly specialised knowledge of local ecosystems possessed by different estate and language groups across the region." Trade included eels, but also many other resources.Bunjil's Shelter
The creator deity or ancestral being known as Bunjil is significant in Djab Wurrung culture. Over 90 per cent of Aboriginal rock art in Victoria can be found on Djab Wurrung and Jardwadjali country, especially in the Grampians National Park. One of the most significant rock art sites in south-eastern Australia is Bunjil's Shelter on Djab Wurrung country in the Black Range Scenic Reserve, not far from Stawell. In the nineteenth century, Europeans knew of the site but few had seen it. Its location was made public in 1957. In the following decades, the distinctiveness in the artistic style at the site, as well as discrepancies in older European descriptions of Bunjil's Shelter, led to speculation that the artwork was European, not Djab Wurrung, in origins. The site was struck off the Victorian Archaeological Survey register by 1980, but was later reinstated when chemical analysis confirmed that the rock art had, in fact, been painted with traditional Aboriginal ochres; the analysis found that parts of the painting had been traced over with European whitewash and red lead paint.Burial rites
Some of the Djab Wurrung clans are thought to have practised burial of their dead in trees. According to Hyett there have been two recent discoveries to the west of Ararat of secondary tree burials, involving the re-interment of two or more individuals, and a primary interment of a child in a hollow tree in the vicinity of Stawell.Land management and ecological knowledge
Settlements
Effective land management and reliable natural resources meant that permanent or semi-permanent villages made up of substantial huts were common on Djab Wurrung country, especially near creeks, streams, and on the verges of swamps. They were occupied as subsistence and seasonality dictated. Major Thomas Mitchell encountered huts of this kind near Mount Napier in 1836:Two very substantial huts showed that even the natives had been attracted by the beauty of the land, and as the day was showery, I wished to return if possible, to pass the night there, for I began to learn that such huts, with a good fire between them, made comfortable quarters in bad weather.
In 1841, south of Mount William, George Augustus Robinson described seeing many abandoned mounds that were once the base of enclosed huts, which he described as being "large, some 15 feet in diameter." North of Mount William, Robinson saw more such structures which were "the largest had seen: the one I measured was 31 yards long, two yards high, and 19 yards broad."
In 1853, in a letter to Charles La Trobe, the pastoralist Charles Browning Hall reported that there were, on his land north-east of Mount William, numerous "old mia-mias where the earth around was strewed with the balls formed in the mouth when chewing the farinaceous matter out of the bulrush root."
Aquaculture
was significant in Djab Wurrung life. Wilkie writes that Djab Wurrung knowledge of "the seasons and their cycles underpinned farming, hunting, and plant food cultivation. As with other Indigenous groups in the western parts of Victoria, were perhaps some of the first humans to practise aquaculture. Fish traps and weirs across rivers were a common sight in the region." The pastoralist Charles Browning Hall wrote in 1853 thatAbout the Grampians were numerous at the time of my residence, and had apparently been much more so, judging from the traces left by them in the swampy margins of the river. At these places we found many low sod banks extending across the shallow branches of the river, with apertures at intervals, in which were placed long, narrow, circular nets made of rush-work.
Clark notes that during early Autumn there were large gatherings of up to 1,000 people for one to two months hosted at the Mount William swamp or at Lake Bolac for the annual eel migration. Near Mount William, an elaborate network of channels, weirs and eel traps and stone shelters had been constructed, indicative of a semi-permanent lifestyle in which eels were an important economic component for food and bartering, particularly the Short-finned eel. Near Lake Bolac a semi-permanent village extended some along the river bank during autumn. George Augustus Robinson on 7 July 1841 described some of the infrastructure that had been constructed near Mount William:
...an area of at least was thus traced out... These works must have been executed at great cost of labour... There must have been some thousands of yards of this trenching and banking. The whole of the water from the mountain rivulets is made to pass through this trenching ere it reaches the marsh
In mid summer, gatherings for ceremony and hunting took place at Mirraewuae, a marsh near Hexham rich with emu and other game.