PRICKLE PARANOIA?

What a strange and sad irony that last month’s Plant of the Month the Bunya tree, along with Lisa Delanoue’s lovely piece on preparing bunya nuts for eating, as well as the piece on Bunya Dreaming, should be brought down to earth on page 8 with the call to remove the recentlyplanted avenue of bunyas at the town entrance.

The reason that the young Bunyas, which incidentally are growing beautifully, have attracted the ire of a few seems to be the concern that people walking along the roadside will encounter prickly bunya leaves or maybe a falling cone.

This objection is truly lame, as anyone walking alongside a well-used road is ill-advised to be doing so in bare feet. All those who have picked up roadside litter on Clean-Up Australia Day will tell of broken glass, tin cans and more, lurking in the grass, often rendered even more dangerous by having been run over by the slasher or mower.

The wider world does not share this paranoia for prickles. In pride of place in Queen’s Park in Maryborough is a large Bunya tree reputed to have been planted by John Carne Bidwill after whom the plant was named. Presumably Maryborough residents, as well as tourists, have the sense to wear shoes and to avoid walking under the truly majestic tree when the cones are falling. There are a number of bunya trees happily resident in the old botanical gardens in Brisbane too, and even some at Government House.

No, the prickles in feet and falling nuts are not a valid reason for removal of the Bunya avenue approach to Kenilworth.

The Bunya Araucaria bidwillii is far more than just a big tree with prickly leaves and whopping great nuts and it needs to recognised as an integral part of the history of this area.

At the start of European settlement, Bunya trees were in great abundance in south-east Queensland. It was Andrew Petrie, Commissioner for Works in the Moreton Bay settlement who was the first to bring back samples of the Bunya and who recognized its significance, to first nations people. Bunya gatherings, both at Baroon Pocket and what we now call the Bunya Mountains, drew up to 5000 attendees travelling long distances to attend.

It was Petrie’s representations to Governor Gipps in Sydney (Queensland was still part of New South Wales at the time) that lead to the Bunya Proclamation of 1842

"It having been represented to the Governor that a District exists to the northward of Moreton Bay, in which a fruit-bearing tree abounds, called Bunya or Bonye Bonye, and that the Aborigines from considerable distances resort at certain times of the year to this District for the purpose of eating the fruit of the said Tree:- His Excellency is pleased to direct that no Licences be granted for the occupation of any Lands within the said District in which the Bunya or Bonye Bonye Tree is found. And notice is hereby given, that the several Crown Commissioners in the New England and Moreton Bay Districts have been instructed to remove any person who may be in an unauthorised occupation of Land whereon the said Bunya Trees are to be found. His Excellency has also directed that no Licences to cut Timber be granted within the said Districts."

Explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, who experienced a bunya gathering in 1844 wrote, “The grandeur and solitudes (of the Blackall Ranges bunya forests)... produces a strange feeling of exultation... What can I say about the Bunya Bunya brush? ...About the majestic tree whose trunk seems like a pillar supporting the vault of Heaven? About its cones, their fall, sounding through the silence of the brush?”

Effectively the Bunya Proclamation should have meant that Bunya country would be a sizeable reserve for first nations people, but settlers eyed off the land and timber–getters eyed off the trees and one of the first acts of the parliament of the newly separated state of Queensland, in 1860, was to repeal the Bunya Proclamation and open the area up for settlement and deforestation.

To have an avenue of bunyas flanking the road (but sensibly planted well back from it) makes a great entrance to the town and a tangible reminder of a time that goes way, way back before the early days of a fledging Kenilworth. Trees that have been around since the dinosaurs, to be given the chop on an ill-founded concern about prickles in feet. I think not.