Budj Bim

• Official Name: Budj Bim Cultural Landscape
• Location: Southeastern Australia
• Type: Cultural
• Year of Inscription: 2019

Budj Bim is located in southeastern Australia in the traditional homeland of the Gunditjmara people, who have lived there for thousands of years. Their ancestors established one of the oldest and most extensive aquaculture systems ever found. The basis of this system of channels and dams were formed by lava flows from the Budj Bim volcano, which the Gunditjmara people refined into a system to catch and store a short-finned eel known as Anguilla australis, known as kooyang to the Gunditjmara.

The kooyang harvested from Budj Bim were a major source of sustenance and the basis of the economic and social lives of the Gunditjmara for centuries. Throughout all that time, they have maintained the oral history of the formation of Budj Bim in what is called a “deep time” or “dreamtime” story. The story of the formation of Budj Bim is considered by many experts to be the oldest creation story continually told from pre-history to the present. This adds great cultural significance to the area in addition to the role it has played in providing food and economic resources for the Gunditjmara people.

The area that includes Budj Bim also includes indigenous protected lands known as Kurtonitj and Tyrendarra. Together, they represent one of the oldest and largest areas of indigenous occupation in Victoria, Australia. Visitors to the area can see the aquaculture that was so important to the Gunditjmara people, the volcanic rock that helped form the area, and the local plants and wildlife that continue to thrive there. The area is of such significant cultural importance to the history of Australia’s original people that in 2019, it was designated as a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site.

History

“Deep time” is a term used by Western researchers for a time period back in Earth’s development that is so far back it is difficult for people to truly understand or imagine. Indigenous people, the original inhabitants of Australia, call the stories of this time of Earth’s creation dreamtime stories. The Gunditjmara stories of the creation of Budj Bim have been told consistently for at least six thousand years, and some experts claim it could be thousands of years older than that. It is considered by most anthropologists to be the earliest creation story in continuous oral circulation.

According to the Gunditjmara, Budj Bim was one of four giant beings who came to Australia. Three of them continued on to other parts of what became the island country, but Budj Bim crouched down in the southeastern part of the continent. His body transformed into a volcano—once known as Budj Bim but now called Mount Eccles—and when he spit his teeth out, they flowed like lava and formed rocks in the area. Scientists say that the volcano erupted at least once 37,000 years ago and that a stone axe found beneath the hardened lava flow indicates that there were humans in the area to witness the eruption. Researchers determined that this is the type of volcano that forms rapidly as it erupts, from nearly flat earth to tall peaks many feet or meters high in a matter of days or weeks. The volcano is now dormant and it is unclear how often it might have erupted in the past. However, it does seem that Indigenous people were living in the area and witnessed its rapid growth, giving rise to the dreamtime story about Budj Bim.

The ancestors of the Gunditjmara not only told the dreamtime tale of how the extinct volcano and the lava flows around it changed the landscape; they also used the changes it made to the land to sustain and support themselves. Carbon dating testing has revealed eel traps that date to more than six thousand years ago that were used by the Gunditjmara to catch kooyang eels. They developed a sophisticated system for using the channels formed by lava flows along with ponds, dams, weirs or low dams used to control water flow on rivers, and sinkholes to not only trap eels but also to store and breed live animals.

The ancient indigenous people took advantage of a plentiful supply of fresh water and the eel population to maintain a year-round supply of food from the migratory eels. They trapped the eels in low-water areas formed in the aquaculture and used baskets set into areas where they controlled the water flow with weirs to catch them when it was time to harvest the kooyang. The Gunditjmara established stable communities around this aquaculture, building homes and structures where they smoked the eels. They traded the eel meat and farmed to round out their diets and to provide the means to trade for other items that they needed.

The Gunditjmara continued this way of life for thousands of years, until European settlers arrived in the area in the 1830s. This led to conflict between the Gunditjmara, who held a deep cultural, spiritual, and personal connection to the land, and the Europeans who sought to use the same resources that had sustained the Indigenous people for centuries. The result was twenty years of fighting known as the Eumerella wars, which were resolved in the 1860s with the Australian government attempting to forcibly remove the Gunditjmara from their ancestral land.

When some resisted this strongly, the Australian government created a mission at Lake Condah, where the Gunditjmara could continue to have access to some of the eel trap system and could still see the dormant Budj Bim volcano so important to their culture. The mission survived until the 1950s, but even after its destruction, members of the Gunditjmara people maintained a tenacious hold on their ancestral land. It was officially returned to them in 1987 by the Victorian government. It is now managed by the Gunditjmara in cooperation with the Windamara Indigenous Corporation and several other groups dedicated to the preservation of indigenous rights, land, and customs. The land is also part of a national park. This, along with inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list, helps ensure the integrity of the Gunditjmara land for future generations.

Significance

The Budj Bim Cultural Landscapes represents one of the largest and best-preserved examples of an indigenous aquaculture system in the world. This is further enhanced by the area’s relationship to the deep time/dreamtime creation story and its long-standing connection to the cultural, economic, social, and spiritual history of the indigenous Gunditjmara people. For thousands of years, the land was under the stewardship of the native people. This was interrupted for only a relatively brief time by the presence of outsiders, which means that the historical and ecological integrity and authenticity of the area is mostly intact.

Sites are chosen for addition to the UNESCO World Heritage list because they meet at least one of ten criteria related to their cultural or natural significance. Budj Bim was selected on the basis of two of these criteria. First, it bears unique or exceptional testimony to the Gunditjmara culture and their ability to harness yet live in harmony with the natural resources around them to support a thriving people and culture. The practices of kooyang husbandry that sustained these Indigenous people centuries ago have been passed down through the generations and continue to provide an important connection to the past and a way of sustenance in the present. In addition, the area represents the dreamtime storytelling tradition of the Indigenous people in an exceptionally impressive way, since researchers believe the Budj Bim tale may be the oldest creation story in continuous telling in the world.

Second, the Budj Bim site represents an outstanding example of a human settlement and use of the land in a way that demonstrates human interaction with the land in the face of irreversible changes made by nature. The volcanic eruption that formed Budj Bim changed the ways that water flowed in the area, creating water channels, sinkholes, and rivers that the Gunditjmara converted for their own purposes. Without causing harm to the land, they took advantage of the changed water flows and enhanced them with hydrological engineering in the form of man-made dams, weirs, and other structures. They did this in a way that enabled them to take advantage of the migratory patterns of the short-finned eel that were also native to the area to create a year-round source of food and trade.

While there were some human-made alterations to the area that impacted the water flow, those were reversed by 2010, restoring the aquaculture to something that the ancient Gunditjmara people could have readily recognized. The area is therefore maintained with a high degree of integrity to the way it has been used for thousands of years. The management of the Gunditjmara and other Indigenous people ensures that the archeological, cultural, anthropological, spiritual, and historical significance of Budj Bim Cultural Landscapes will be maintained for many more generations to come.

Bibliography

Barras, Colin. “Is an Indigenous Tale of an Ancient Volcano the Oldest Story Ever Told?” Science, 11 Feb. 2020, www.science.org/content/article/Indigenous-tale-ancient-volcano-oldest-story-ever-told. Accessed 26 July 2022.

“Budj Bim Cultural Landscape.” UNESCO World Heritage Convention, whc.unesco.org/en/list/1577/. Accessed 26 July 2022.

“Budj Bim National Park.” Parks Victoria, www.parks.vic.gov.au/places-to-see/parks/budj-bim-national-park. Accessed 26 July 2022.

Capstick, Natasha. “Deep Time Dreaming: A Critical Review.” University of Technology, Sydney, 2017, epress.lib.uts.edu.au/student-journals/index.php/NESAIS/article/download/1527/1659. Accessed 26 July 2022.

“Experience Gunditjmara Country.” Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, www.budjbim.com.au/. Accessed 26 July 2022.

“Gunditjmara People Build Budj Bim Eel Trap System.” Deadly Story, www.deadlystory.com/page/culture/history/Gunditjmara‗people‗build‗sophisticated‗Budj‗Bim‗eel‗trap‗system. Accessed 26 July 2022.

“National Heritage Places - Budj Bim National Heritage Landscape.” Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment, and Water, www.dcceew.gov.au/parks-heritage/heritage/places/national/budj-bim. Accessed 26 July 2022.

Thompson, Helen. “What Does ‘Deep Time’ Mean to You?” Smithsonian Magazine, 9 Sept. 2014, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-does-deep-time-mean-to-you-180952603/. Accessed 26 July 2022.