By Timothy Bottoms, November 2023
As the recipient of the 2019 S. E. Stephens Award by the Historical Society of Cairns, it astounds me that nobody at your Museum bothered to look at my MA(Qual) thesis (1990), which is on your bookshelves or look at my booklet The Bama, People of the Rainforest (1992), and the Map contained within. This should have raised questions about any map being proposed – it seems it didn’t. What you have on display as the Gimuy Waluba Wulubarra Yidnji is a falsification – someone has an agenda which doesn’t represents the truth. I have attached my response to the question of where tribes were before the coming of Europeans.
Both Roth (1910)1, Tindale (1938)2 and McConnel (1939)3 identify that Cairns’ plain and the northern coastal Barron River [Bana Bidagarra] were the tribal group of the Yirkanji (Yirrganydji), from the Cairns plain to the Mowbray River (where the Djabugay had access to the coast). However, west of Freshwater Creek were the Buluwanydji, extending over the range on the southside of the middle Barron River, encompassing Kuranda and surrounds above Din Din – the Barron Falls to the Clohesy River. The Yirrgay (language of the Yirrganydji) was akin to Buluwai and Djabugay to the north of the Barron River (Bana Wuruu).
