January, 1939 
The Queensland Naturalist 
o 
Finnegan guided him up it for some distance. Parsons 
was not found until January in the next year, when he 
had made his way to Moreton Bay intending to rejoin his 
fellow castaways. He had, having disagreed with and left 
his companions at Bribie Island, spent two years with the 
blacks wandering in the country just to the north of 
Moreton Bay. He was well treated by his adopted tribe, 
and had with them passed through country in which the 
Bunya tree was plentiful, and as mentioned above, had 
actually attended a bunya feast. It is noteworthy that 
in the next year (1824) the “hoop” pine ( Araucaria 
Cunninghamii ) , which was in the early days known as the 
“Moreton Bay” pine, was officially collected and reported 
on by the King’s botanist, Allan Cunningham, in honour 
of whom it was subsequently named. 
The next white man to see the bunya tree (the spell- 
ing of the name has altered from “bunnia” to the modern 
form “bunya”), as far as records go, was James Brace- 
fell, or Bracefield, who also was a convict. He had 
escaped from a chain gang at Moreton Bay Settlement 
shortly after the commencement of Commandant Logan’s 
severe regime in 1825, and had been adopted by a tribe of 
blacks whose domicile was the Maroochy (black swan) 
River district. The chief of the tribe was called Eumundy, 
and he, fortunately for the runaway, had thought Brace- 
fell was a reincarnation of a departed relative, and had 
personally adopted the young man as his son instead of 
killing him as was the usual custom. Bracefell, on 
account of his loquacity, -was given the name of “Wandi,” 
which means “a great talker.” This man lived the life 
of an aboriginal until 1842, a period of sixteen years, 
during which time he attended the Bunya feasts in the 
Bunya seasons. In later years, after his release from his 
primitive) life, he was employed at Goodna, near Brisbane, 
by a Doctor Simpson, in whose service he w^as killed by a 
falling tree. 
The next name connected with the Bunya is that of 
James Davis, another runaway convict, who had been 
transported from Scotland in 1824 at sixteen years of age. 
He was sent to Moreton Bay, and in 1826 escaped from 
his gaolers who, as in the case of Bracefell, were of 
Logan’s 57th regiment, and like him, was adopted by the 
blacks, and lived with the Mary River tribe. He died in 
Brisbane in 1889, aged eighty-one years, and was buried 
at Toowong Cemetery. He left, for him, the amazing 
sum of £10,000. Davis, on account of his remarkable 
agility, was known to the natives as “Derhamboi” or 
