Bunya Dreaming | Plant profile | Gardening Australia

Gubbi Gubbi elder Aunty Beverley Hand invites Jerry to attend the Bunya Dreaming gathering that she organises every summer on the Sunshine Coast - and she delivers a bunya cone for him as well, to make sure he has some bunya nuts for the celebration’s cooking challenge.

The event celebrates the important role of the bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii) in First Nations culture. Local lore dictated that the tree should not be harmed in any way. When early settlers harvested the tree for its timber, they only took the lower section of trunk and left the rest. “When the people saw their trees on the ground they cried for months and their cries could be heard for miles around,” Aunty Bev says.
Bunya pines produce huge 10kg cones, laden with nutritious seeds that can be eaten raw or cooked. The nuts are high in protein, they’re gluten-free, and can be eaten dried and stored. Because of this, they were highly valued by Aboriginal people, who planted them along the eastern seaboard.
Jerry explains that the bunya pines have been around for 200 million years. They are part of an ancient genus of conifers dating to the Gondwana and grew widely across the supercontinent. They are related to another iconic Queensland species, the hoop pine (Araucaria cunninghamii). Now they are restricted to a few pockets in south-east Queensland.
A mature tree can grow to 60 metres and trees can live up to 800 years. Trees are often fenced off in early summer to avoid people being hit by dropping cones!
“We’ve always had family gatherings for Bunya harvests, and it was so much fun I wanted to share it,” Aunty Bev says. Tribes from as far away as Victoria would travel to Queensland to celebrate the harvest, until gatherings were outlawed in 1897. Aunty Bev says she wanted a “modern interpretation of a bunya gathering”.
“I wanted to uphold the cultural traditions. We send out message sticks to invite prominent people and they can in turn invite colleagues and friends.”
A number of challenges are held on the day, including gathering, shucking, storing and cooking the bunya nuts.
The day finishes with a “yowla” or corroboree or dance, “where we say goodbye to everyone” and the crowd is invited to join the dance.

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