Bilinarra

The Bilingara, also known as the Bilinarra, are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory.

Language

The language of the Bilingara is classified as an eastern variety of one of the Pama-Nyungan Ngumbin languages. It is mutually intelligible with Gurindji and the dialect spoken by the neighbouring Ngarinman people. Elements of their tongue were first recorded by a police constable W. H. Willshire in 1896. By 2013, only one person was alive who spoke it as their primary language though it inflects the variety of Kriol spoken by Bilingara children.

Country

Norman Tindale estimated Bilingara tribal land to cover some 7,500 square miles (19,000 km²) covering the areas of the Moray Range, Delamere, and, in its southern extension, down to the Victoria River Downs and Pigeon Hole stations and the junction where the Victoria and Armstrong rivers join. Its eastern boundaries lay beyond Killarney. Numbsers lived around the Billiluna Station in the 1920s. Bilingara territory was predominantly characterized by blacksoil plains, limestone gorges and sandstone outcrops. Their neighbours are the Mudburra to the east, the Gurindji people to the southwest, and the Ngarinman to the northwest. Most Bilingara now live at Pigeon Hole

Cultural practices and beliefs

In order to manufacture a gum for use in fixing tufts of flax to the bodies of dancers in their corroborees, the Bilingara used to call on one of the clan who would not be participating in the dance itself. Once handed a piece of string woven from human hair, the person who was to supply his blood used it as a ligature of his biceps, and then cut into an artery with a stone, jabbing away until an ample flow was secured, which was caught in a bark basin at his feet. What was not used for making gum was given to dingos to lap up.

Their native pharmacopeia drew on things like lemon grass (gubuwubu) and Dodonaea polyzyga (yirrigaji) for preparing a medicinal drink or lotion, mixed with a slurry of termite mound earth (mardumardu) to treat congestion, for example.

With regard to conception, the Bilingara consider that children pre-exist their actual births, in the form of spirits that linger around an outcrop of rocks at a site called Gurdurdularni ('the place of women's children). Even the spirits of the dead (yirrmarug) may reincarnate themselves by shifting into the foetus of a pregnant woman. Numerous foods were taboo for such women, the bans being related to beliefs that such meats might damage the unborn child. Turtle (gurwarlambara) meat for example was forbidden because it was thought that, were it consumed, the child would grow up walking with a turtle-like waddle.

History of contact

The Bilingara suffered from massacres during the period of their dispossession as their land was taken over for pastoral development, and even thereafter, on the stations where they sought employment, were treated harshly. Like other tribes in the area, they suffered from the standard three successive waves of colonial devastation: introduced disease, land-clearing massacres, and forced labour on the new pastoral leases. Their numbers rapidly declined.

Some time around 1922 a Bilingara youth nicknamed ‘Banjo’ killed the Billiluna station manager Condon and his white stockman, Sullivan, after the latter had abducted his woman for sexual purposes. Banjo remonstrated with the usurper, but to no effect, other than being dressed down. When the time came for the annual calf-branding, Banjo snuck into the station and, seizing a rifle on a table, shot Sullivan in the thigh, and he died of the wound soon after. He then aimed at Condon, who asked him not to shoot, and killed him. The other blacks thought of spearing him, but he had the upper hand with a rifle, and ordered some of them to report the murder to the manager of another station, while he slipped off to the Kimberleys with his girl. Jack Flinders eventually tracked him down near Mary River and Louisa Downs, and shot him dead.

Alternative names

• Bilinara
• Bilinurra
• Bilyanarra
• Bilyanurra
• Plinara
• Pillenurra
• Billianera
• Bulinara
• Bringara
• Boonarra

Some words

• jiya (kangaroo)
• jamud. (bush turkey)
• girrawa. (goanna)
• yinarrwa. (barramundi)

Sources

• Eylmann, Erhart (1908). Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien (PDF) (in German). Berlin: D. Reimer. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gaunt, C. E. (5 May 1932). "The Tragedy of Billiluna". Darwin: The Northern Standard . {{cite news}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Lewis, Darrell (2012). A Wild History: Life and Death on the Victoria River Frontier. Monash University Publishing. ISBN 978-1-921-86726-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Meakins, Felicity; Nordlinger, Rachel (2014). A Grammar of Bilinarra: An Australian Aboriginal Language of the Northern Territory. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-1-614-51274-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rose, Deborah Bird (1991). Hidden Histories: Black Stories from Victoria River Downs, Humbert River and Wave Hill Stations. Aboriginal Studies Press. ISBN 978-0-855-75224-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Terry, Michael (November 1926). "A Surgical Operation as Performed by the Boonarra Tribe of Northern Australia, and a Short Vocabulary of the Languages of Some North Australian Tribes". Man: 193–194. JSTOR 2787434. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Tindale, Norman Barnett (1974). "Bilingara (NT)". Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names. Australian National University Press. ISBN 978-0-708-10741-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Willshire, W. H. (1896). Land of the dawning. Adelaide: W. J. Thomas & Co. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)