Cultural Heritage.
Caring for Country.
The Ngunnawal people have survived and thrived in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) region for more than tens of thousands of years. Our complex knowledge of Country and water has been critical to our cultural continuity. ‘Country’ refers to a bounded geographical area, distinct from one another. Country has intrinsic and cultural value.
We have deep cultural interest in conservation, water and fire management. Our knowledge extends to understanding seasonality, taking only what is necessary and harvesting routines associated with flora and fauna including: Daisy Yam, wattle seed, fish (Murray Cod and Yellow Belly), yabbies, platypus, water fowl, terrestrial mammals, and Bogong moths in the summer months.
Looking after Country involves maintaining a balanced physical, social and spiritual environment and contributing to the continuity and renewal of complex relationships between people and the environment.
Our cultural heritage is evident across the Australian Capital Territory and region landscape. Ngunnawal cultural iconography can be found carved and displayed on rock, from axe-grinding grooves on river rocks to stone tool scatters, and highly significant rock art in the Namadgi National Park. Ochre quarries, which would have had great ceremonial and trading value, have been protected within Canberra’s city boundaries at Red Hill and Gungahlin.
Scar trees across the city, from Wanniassa to Bonner, tell of water courses as cultural resources. Major campsites have been recorded on the Black Mountain Peninsula, the lower slopes of Mount Ainslie, near the Botanic Gardens on Sullivan’s Creek, on the lower slopes of Black Mountain, and on the sand hills which sit beneath Pialligo. Recently excavated test pits near Coppins Crossing suggest that “...this site was used regularly by Aborigianl people as a short-term camp at times during the mid to late Holocene, dating to the last 5,000 years.”
Over thousands of years Ngunnawal people have maintained cultural connectivity and deep spiritual links to sites, places, icons, and art.
Capacity to care for Country changed in the early part of the 1800s with the Europeans establishing farms and settlements. Many Aboriginal people in the region, including the Ngunnawal, were forcibly moved and placed in missions and reserves (specifically at Brungle and Edgerton) which were managed by the Aboriginal Protection Board, where foreign language, customs and religions replaced the Dreaming and Aboriginal Lore.
Ngunnawal people’s kinship systems and songlines follow the waterways including the Murrumbidgee, Molonglo and Cotter rivers, which flow through the ACT. These rivers and their tributaries represent our people’s Dreaming, cultural roots, sense of belonging, identity and purpose.
Our Ngunnawal ancestors normally moved in small blood/family groups although, on occasion, held gatherings of a thousand or more people at a time, coming together to make use of resources that were seasonally abundant.
Tidbinbilla.
Tidbinbilla is a place of historical and ongoing significance to the Ngunnawal people. Over the years it is acknowledged that some areas around the region have more significance and value than others. One of these is the Tidbinbilla valley where rock shelters were used dating back as far as the last Ice Age.
The name ‘Tidbinbilla’ comes from the Ngunnawal word ‘Jedbinbilla’ which means ‘where boys become men’, identifying the special relationship Ngunnawal men have to the valley and its use for ceremonies and passing on of traditional customary men’s lore/law.
As traditional custodians of this land, the Ngunnawal people have lived and gathered in the valley and its surrounding mountains since time immemorial.
Ngunnawal people maintained and used the valley for various purposes such as a gathering place and a place to source food including the migratory bogong moths. The Ngunnawal custodianship and connection to Country continues strongly today.
The valley made a perfect settlement area for Ngunnawal people as it provided a haven of resources with a central river fed by the high peaks of the valley catchment. The Tidbinbilla valley also had many natural grasslands which made a perfect hunting ground along with many rock shelters scattered throughout.
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Men’s and women’s business were conducted separately, and many geological formations can be found in the valley which represent the relationship that men and women have to country. Often these geological formations would be sacred places of cultural lore and places special to either Men or Women’s business.
Men’s sites were often found in the higher peaks of the valley. One of the Rock shelters is home to ancient rock art found along a pathway to the Gibraltar rock peak which is a men’s site.
While the mountains in Tidbinbilla are also important to Ngunnawal women, women’s sites were found closer to the river system that twisted through the valley. In some women’s places grinding grooves can still be found on the river’s edge.
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To the Ngunnawal people, knowledge of history is not only embedded in archaeological finds, it is also preserved within the landscape through oral traditional stories, dance, memory, ceremony, artistic depictions found in rock art sites.
Cultural landscapes refer to the mountains, waterholes, rivers, caves, rock formations, flora, fauna, wind and air, that is the interconnected web of these elements expressed by customary traditions.
Often grand geological formations would be significant to the story of place. Many formations can still be seen today which visually reflect the dreaming story of the valley and its important relationship to the people that have survived and thrived within it for thousands of years. An example of this is the shape of a pregnant woman seen through the contours in the western slopes of the valley and found in the centre of the Tidbinbilla valley is a rock that looks like a perched eagle (Maliyan) the creator spirit of the Tidbinbilla dreaming story.
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Tidbinbilla provides visitors with a unique opportunity to picture the long and ongoing connection of Ngunnawal people with the land and local flora and fauna.
The Birrigai Rock Shelter is one of the oldest known inhabited rock shelters in the world, and shows Aboriginal use of shelters during the last Ice Age dating back over 25,000 years to a time when temperatures were 8-10°C colder than they are now and when snow covered the ground for almost half the year.
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Tidbinbilla was a key place for Ngunnawal ceremonies, with groups from surrounding areas entering through key points such as Gibraltar Peak, where an elder would light a fire to guide people into the valley. Neighbouring language groups travelled to Ngunnawal Country for the purpose of ceremony, Lore, marriage arrangements, trade, sharing of seasonal foods and cultural knowledge.
Tidbinbilla was also a place where young men learnt traditional lore/law, and where they were taken into the mountains as they learnt to become men in the traditional way. Similarly, Ngunnawal women carried out their customary ceremonies in the lower areas of the landscape preparing young girls for womanhood.
The mountains surrounding the valley were home in spring to the migrating bogong moths, which were gathered by Ngunnawal people as a source of food.
Namarag.
Namarag nature reserve is considered a special place for the Ngunnawal people as it is where their ancestors would gather, with Molonglo River once utilised as a pathway to move throughout the landscape
Namarag Reserve is an exemplar of what we want to see happen in the future. A place for all Canberrans and visitors to gather and learn. It strengthens people’s understanding of the connection to Ngunnawal country, as well as improves the aesthetic appeal of the area and helps protect key environmental values.
The whole design was built around Ngunnawal culture, Ngunnawal community and explicitly involving Ngunnawal people. There are walking track access points into the reserve encouraging families and info from surrounding suburbs to engage with the reserve.