A Part of Buderim's History

Where Did they Go? The Story of Buderim’s Indigenous Residents

Ray Kerkhove

What became of the Aboriginal (Gubbi Gubbi) people of Buderim? The short answer is: they're still here. Indigenous families whose original country was the Buderim/ Mooloolah area - the Chillis, Muckans, Beetsons and others - mostly continue to live on the Sunshine Coast. Quite a few still live on or near Buderim.  However, the Aboriginal community underwent many changes and is today much smaller than at the dawn of Buderim’s history. To understand how this occurred, we need to follow their story almost decade by decade....

1820s - 1830s: 'First contact' occurred almost 200 years ago - explorers, castaways, escaped convicts and bunders ('wild white men') wandering and staying everywhere between Brisbane to Wide Bay.  Some of them must have passed through Buderim, though this was never recorded, as the area back then was an important Gubbi Gubbi resource and work site, as well as a camping ground (towards Sippy Downs).  The latter, being the "hillside resort” for the Gubbi Gubbi and others engaged in fishing and oyster-diving between Pt Cartwright and Alexandra Headlands, must have been much frequented to judge from the huge middens (shell heaps) that once characterised the area (Jackson 1937).  Smallpox spreading from the penal colonies decimated local populations before the first settlers arrived, but well into the 1860s, there were still some 300 Aborigines inhabiting the Mooloolah/ Buderim region (McGavrie 1999:2).