Let’s honour histories
JUST before Christmas, Sean Wilson of Kirwan wrote a letter where he contemplated if our city’s traditional custodians had been consulted on the possibility of providing a cultural name for our new stadium.
Sean went on further to say that it would be a great way to honour our local traditional custodians and a way to show the country (and the world) that Townsville has grown up.
It was an idea that received a glowing endorsement from
Shari Tagliabue in her column, and Shari even went further and contemplated why local indigenous knowledges and histories are rarely shared in Australia.
This year, our country is on the cusp of commemorating 250 years since Captain James Cook and the HMS Endeavour sailed along the eastern coastline of the continent.
From the landing in Botany Bay, to towns such as Seventeen Seventy, Cooktown, and eventually to Possession Island, many localities and geographical features along our Pacific coastline tell the story of Cook’s journey.
Closer to home, Magnetic Island serves as our own local reminder of the Endeavour’s expedition, but if I flipped the discourse and used the word Yunbenun to describe it, would you understand what I would be trying to convey?
As hundreds of people walking up Castle Hill use the
Cutheringa track each day, have you ever stopped and wondered what Cutheringa might be referring to?
For thousands of years before the Endeavour sailed past our shores, the Gurambilbarra Wulgurukaba people lived on Yunbenun (Magnetic Island) and the land where our CBD now stands, the Bindal people lived on the land which now makes up the southern portion of our city, and the Nywaigi people lived on the land which makes up the furthest reaches of our Northern Beaches.
They placed their own names on many of geographical features that surround our city, and they have their own knowledge which tells the story of the lands on which our city is built.
While in recent years, some of those knowledge and stories have become immortalised in new public developments (Jezzine Barracks, for example), there is still so much more history from our city’s traditional custodians that can be incorporated as part of the greater story of our city.
As we spend this year reflecting on events which