A Part of Buderim's History

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

Ray Kerkhove

1880s - 1890s:  By the 1880s, the survivors were living in a very different world from their parents. Buderim’s large pastoral and timber leases had been minutely subdivided. Farming dominated the plateau. Scores of Kanaka (South Sea Islander) cane workers inhabited a village in the centre of Buderim.  Most of the Kanaks were single males. In their free time, they often mixed with local Aboriginal people at their camping grounds (Mooloolaba, Cottontree, Nambour etc.), so it is not surprising that many married Gubbi Gubbi women.

Unfortunately, government authorities took a dim view of such liaisons.  Aboriginals were now a minority group to be controlled rather than feared.  It became commonplace for settlers to request that particular Aboriginal individuals or families be placed "for their own good" into benevolent institutes or Aboriginal Reserves. A number of the latter had been formed: at White Patch (Bribie Island), Durundur (Woodford), Myora (Stradbroke Island), Fraser Island, and Deebing Creek (Ipswich). 

Thus when it was reported that at least 16 Buderim Kanakas had married Gubbi Gubbi women, the Immigration Agent (Mr Brennan) was sent to Buderim to investigate. Finding the reports correct, the Queensland Protector of Aborigines, Archibald Meston, ordered tracker Willie Gordon to "muster the women and their children for transport to a home in Brisbane" (COL/143).  Though Meston later regretted the forcible manner in which this was carried out - particularly how the three children of Sam Gee Gee (Wageegee) and Annie Lawrtie were seized by police on their way home from school, the Gee Gee children, Robert Wassemo, Alice Sandwich and Mary Ann Brown and others were removed from Buderim. As might be expected, their Kanaka/Aboriginal parents (and some of the Buderim settlers such as George Jones) wrote letters of protest, but with no result (COL/ 143, 02/14989).

Despite such obstacles, Aboriginal/ Kanaka families took great pride in the fact that they were - unlike most Aborigines of south-east Queensland - able to school their children. In 1887 a school opened in Buderim and Aborigines and Islander families were amongst the students (Pitt 1999). Their dedication is seen in the fact that many of the Indigenous mums chose to camp very near the Buderim school (McGarvie 1999: 5-6).

The Aborigines of Buderim were now, as photos show, increasingly “Western” in their lifestyle and mode of dress (see John Oxley Collection Neg. 57015), yet they simultaneously tried to maintain traditional social and ritual obligations such as bora initiations and inter-tribal gatherings.  This was another reason for their sudden 'disappearances' or 'walkabouts.’ Charlotte Kuskopf, recalling the 1890s, states that groups still conducted "walkabouts from the Blackall Ranges, Hunchy and Buderim" during the bunya season, camping overnight at Woombye and giving bunya nuts to her family when they left (Taiton 1976).