Vol. XIX. 1 Royal Australasian Ornithologists' Unions 207 



1(1 an iinnu'iise height and girtli. I have nicasurcd sonic 

 ()idinary-si/A"d trees, 150 feet high and al)()ut 4 feet in (hanieter. 

 'Hiey are as straiglit and round as a gun-barrel. . . 'Uw. 

 fruit of this pine is a large cone or core, about 9 by 6 inches, and 

 covered with small cones, similar in appearance to a pineapple. 

 It is these small nuts that the blacks eat ; they travel two or 

 three hundred miles to feed on the fruit. It is plentiful every 

 three years." According to Mr. A. Meston (a former Protector 

 of Queensland Aborigines), the first cones of this pine sold in 

 London Covent (iardcn market at ten guineas each. Meston 

 gives the word biinya as the native name of the tree ; " the nut is 

 called yenggec, and the complete hahnyayenggee is the bunya nut." 

 Miss Constance Petrie, however, on the authority of her father, 

 makes the blacks' word hon-yi (bon-ye). Incidentally, she points 

 out that her grandfather, Andrew Petrie, discovered this tree ; 

 " but he gave some specimens to a Mr. Bidwell, who forwarded 

 them to the old country, and hence the tree was named after 

 him, not after the true discoverer." 



How fond the natives were of the bon-yi nut has been told by 

 several early Oueenslandcrs, notably Tom Petrie, than whom no 

 one knew better the blacks of the Brisbane district. In the fine 

 book of recollections given to the world by his daughter, he notes 

 that the gatherings of the blacks in the bon-yi season were really 

 huge picnics. The aborigines belonging to the district would 

 send messengers out to invite members from other tribes to come 

 and have a feast. Perhaps fifteen would be asked here, and 

 thirty there, and they were mostly young people, who were fit and 

 able to travel. These tribes, in turn, would ask others, and so 

 the invitations went on from tribe to tribe. Then would begin 

 the great " trek." It is notable that the travellers kept as close 

 to the coast as possible on these journeys, thereby fortifying them- 

 selves with a fish diet preparatory to several weeks' adherence to 

 a menu that was largely vegetarian. At the Bunya Mountains 

 each tribe seems to have had its particular area, and, again, 

 individual ownership of particular trees was recognized from 

 generation to generation. It is interesting to note also that Miss 

 Petrie states that her father's experience at the Blackall Range 

 (north of the Bunya Mountains) showed that the blacks would 

 never by any chance cut a bon-yi, affirming that to do so would 

 be to injure the tree, and that they climbed with the vine alone, 

 the rough surface of the tree helping them. Apparently it was not 

 so on the range now known as " The Bunyas." Here every one 

 of the thousands of big Bunya pines is more or less distinctly 

 marked to the first branch with what appear to be cuts made by 

 the natives to give them purchase in climbing. Nor can it fairly 

 be said that these marks are of recent origin^ — belonging to the 

 sixties or seventies, after which the native * pilgrims dwindled 

 away — for timber-getters tell us they find these cuts right in the 

 hearts of some trees ! 



Gazing at those mute relics of a day that is dead, one felt 



