Local link to circumnavigation

The Australian aborigine who took part in the first circumnavigation of Australia 200 years ago was born in Koolewong, according to a local tourism operator.

Koolewong-born Bungaree (Bungary) was the first aborigine to sail around his homeland continent, according to Mr Wayne Peters of Coastal Eco-Tours.

Monday, June 9, marked the bicentennial of the circumnavigation of the Australian coastline in 1803 by Matthew Flinders who took Bungaree with him aboard the Investigator.

Bungaree later went on to become a tribal elder within his Stingray-totem clan, the Guringai-Walkeloa, said Mr Peters.

Mr Peters said: "The really sad thing to me is that although Bungaree was a Coast-born Koori legend, very few children on the Central Coast are aware that he existed.

"This Koolewong-born Guringai Koori discovered Tasmania with Bass and Flinders (1799), sailed around Australia twice (with Flinders 1801-3 and Parker King 1816-7) and was designated by the British Colony as the first Aboriginal King of Australia.

"And no one knows about him in his own backyard," said Mr Peters.

"The Walkeloa or Wannungine-Wannerawa speaking people were the traditional residents and landowners of the NSW Central Coast region up until around 1815.

"By 1816, most of Bungaree's tribal clan folk relocated with him to Mosman or Middle Harbour - a move orchestrated cleverly by the then Governor, Lachlan Macquarie.

"For well over 25 000 years, the coastal Guringai/Walkeloa aborigines hunted, explored and fished from the vast natural resources of the many rain-forest valleys and temperate woodland forests that greet the shores of our richly stocked waterways.

"The Walkeloa people survived three world ice ages and a sea level that changed as many times by using clever bush craft."

Coastal EcoTours held an informal "friends of the Guringai/Walkeloa" gathering (Bora) at its survival base camp on Sunday, June 8.

The afternoon included a series of short semimars on the heroic exploits and achievements of King Bungaree and the Guringai bush tucker and medicine of the Broken Bay and Brisbane Water regions.

Press release, June 3.