Wiradjuri Places ! Wiradjuri Reserve and Gobba Beach Why is it an Aboriginal Place? The Wiradjuri Reserve to Gobba Beach corridor of the Murrumbidgee River is an Aboriginal camping and meeting area used from traditional to modern times. Why is it important to Aboriginal people? The Aboriginal Place is associated with a traditional Wiradjuri story concerning a couple, Gobbagumbalin and Pomingalarna, who broke traditional law. According to the story, the sad chant of local frogs is a reminder of the death of the couple. The Aboriginal Place is significant as a former gathering, corroboree, fishing, camping, swimming and river crossing place for local Wiradjuri groups. The area is rich in resources including plants, land, fresh water animals and water. It is also the location of a traditional Wiradjuri river crossing place where, according to traditional stories, the carer of the ‘Nurrang gungali’ or crossing place resides. A shanty town, or fringe camp, was established on the Wiradjuri Reserve in the 1930s. The settlement, locally known as Tintown, consisted of numerous huts occupied by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal families, dependant on government rations during the Great Depression. Though the town authorities tried to clear the Tintown camp in the 1940s, people continued to live in the settlement until the 1950s. Jack Argus, who was born in 1922 and grew up at Tintown, said: There were hundreds of huts on both sides of the river, Aboriginal and white families... It used to be known as Tent Town here, then it was Tintown and then later people called it the Bend. You didn’t like to be known as coming from Tintown, so you called it the Flats, because people didn’t know where that was (Kabaila 1998). What is on the ground? The Wiradjuri Reserve to Gobba Beach Reserve contains very little remaining physical evidence of Wiradjuri occupation, due to the intensive use, floods, landscape modification and changes over the past 180 years including sand and soil removal.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 09:42:29 +0000
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