Tools & things made
Bark blankets and bedding
bilangkurr · kararr · kakarr
On a cold dry-season night on a sand bed the dictionary has a word, kiway-kiway, for how that feels[1]. The answer was paperbark: 'Sheets of soft tea-tree (Melaleuca) bark are often to be found used as blankets in cold weather, in many districts, and would appear to answer the purpose admirably', and at Bloomfield 'sheets of Melaleuca ... were used as blankets in cold weather', over a mattress of 'bunches of long bush grass' and a floor of fan-palm leaves[2][3]. The dictionary keeps the bed in two words: kararr, 'a blanket, sheet, or grass bedding spread out to lie on', and kakarr, 'grass; blanket to lie on, not to put over you'; bilangkurr is the blanket itself[1]. In the rainforest to the south a finer blanket was beaten out of the inner bark of a fig, and Roth watched one made at Atherton from the climb to the folding, five or six hours' work that is set out step by step below[2]. Possum cloaks and kangaroo rugs were, by Roth's time, 'a lost art in Queensland'[2].
Hann River Cape York
Possum People's country on the upper river and Thaypan (Kuku Thaypan) country downstream: stringybark and bloodwood woodland and a spring-fed sandy river that runs north-east from the Great Dividing Range, past the Peninsula Developmental Road, into Rinyirru (Lakefield) and the North Kennedy. Not Kuku Yalanji country: the Kuku Yalanji words on this page are the dictionary's, not the Hann's own languages. Place guide
The Hann is not Kuku Yalanji country, but its dry-season nights get cold too: July at Musgrave has a mean minimum of 13.7 °C[11]. Paperbarks fringe the river, and tea-tree country is one of the Kuku Thaypan Elders' nine country types[12][13]. No bark blanket is recorded from the Hann itself; the nearest records are Roth's, from the hinterland of Princess Charlotte Bay where the Hann's water ends up, and they describe a sheet or two of bark on a raised sleeping platform, with a smoky fire in front[8].
The blanket trees here
The major streams of this country carry a fringing woodland of silver-crowned paperbark, Melaleuca fluviatilis or M. argentea, less often the weeping paperbark M. leucadendra, sometimes with river red gum (regional ecosystem type 3.3.10a)[12]. Back from the river the Kuku Thaypan Elders count tea-tree country among their nine country types: 'mixed tall and low open Tea-tree Melaleuca viridiflora woodland flats, with open grassy plains'[13]. The Atlas of Living Australia holds 346 Melaleuca records, from 1932 to 2023, in a box of about 90 × 85 km around the middle Hann, Laura and western Rinyirru: 131 of them are the broad-leaved tea-tree M. viridiflora, 27 M. leucadendra and 17 M. fluviatilis. It holds no record of Roth's blanket fig, the ribbed fig, in the same box[14].
Cold nights here
July is Musgrave's coldest month, with a mean minimum of 13.7 °C, and almost no rain falls from May to September[11]. The wet runs from December to March; by October 'the land is brown and parched'[15]. So the blanket nights here are the middle of the dry, the same as on the upper Mitchell.
How people slept here
Roth's Koko-warra, Koko-rarmul and Lama Lama ('Koko lama-lama') lived in 'the hinterland and coast of Princess Charlotte Bay', the country the Hann drains into[4][15]. His records from there, c. 1900:
- Sleeping platforms. These were 'common in the hinterland of Princess Charlotte Bay, a sheet or two of bark on the cross-pieces making it more comfortable to lie upon'; he pictured one from the lower Normanby. A platform stood five to six feet high and held three or four people. A fire burned in front, 'the smoke from which keeps the sleepers free from mosquitoes; the fire is never built immediately beneath'. The local names he gives are barpur (Koko-warra) and arrianggar (Lama Lama)[8].
- Taking the sheet. The hafted stone hammer used 'for tapping on the bark when the sheet is being removed' was, Roth wrote, 'in use throughout the Princess Charlotte Bay hinterland, in 1898'; its Koko-warra name was ambianga[6].
- The blanket tree's name. Roth's plant list marks a Melaleuca '[Blankets]' and gives its Koko-warra name as tu-a[4].
- The mallet. The women's ironwood mallet of the same hinterland was shaped like a cricket bat, 'similar to the model of the implement made by an aged native in the Atherton scrubs when showing me the old-time method of manufacturing a blanket'. Roth records it there for 'breaking up nuts, pounding various food-stuffs, and other articles', not for blankets[6].
The Kuku Thaypan Elders' fire knowledge, as Standley recorded it, does not describe bark blankets. It does record the care taken with paperbark: scarred trees show 'the sustainable use of paperbark (it is re-used, travelled with and buried at the place it was cut from)', and paperbark 'provides an effective drip torch and ... a wrap for food to keep it clean when cooking in the ground'[13].
On country today
The upper Hann is the Possum People's country[16]; the middle and lower Hann are in the Thaypan native title determination of November 2023, held by the Awu-Laya Indigenous Corporation[17]. Downstream, Rinyirru is jointly managed by the Rinyirru Aboriginal Corporation and the Queensland Government[15]. Ask the Traditional Owners before cutting bark.
Language
In Kuku Thaypan, the language of the middle and lower Hann, the paperbark (Melaleuca sericea, M. stenostachya) is andawga, recorded with the prefix aci-[18]. Roth's Koko-warra names from Princess Charlotte Bay are under 'How people slept here'.
Upper Mitchell Western Yalanji
Western Yalanji country west of the Great Dividing Range: dry open woodland cut by the sandy, paperbark-lined upper Mitchell River, around Karma Waters and Mount Carbine. Place guide
On a July night at Karma Waters the air goes down to 14 °C and the mist sits on the river[19]. The river is lined with paperbark, so the blanket tree is close to every camp[20].
The trees here
The broad-leaved paperbark Melaleuca leucadendra lines the Mitchell at Karma Waters in a fringing woodland (regional ecosystem 9.3.14), and the fibre-barked teatree M. stenostachya is on the drier ground: the blanket tree is the river tree[20][21][22]. The figs recorded near Karma Waters, the cluster fig and the sandpaper fig, are river and woodland figs, and no one has recorded a blanket made from them[23][24]. Grass for bedding is everywhere on the flats after the wet[25].
Cold nights here
Palmerville's July nights average 14 °C with the days at 30 °C, a swing of sixteen degrees that opens a bed on the sand to the cold and the dew[19]. The blanket's season is the cold dry, June to August.
Safety here
Cutting bark on the station is a matter for the lessee's permission[26].
On country today
The river at Karma Waters is lined with the tree, the station's camps are open through the cold months, and a paperbark sheet over a grass bed is a one-hour job[20][27].
Eastern coast Eastern Kuku Yalanji
Eastern Kuku Yalanji country: rainforest, beaches, mangroves, reef and the short steep rivers from the Daintree to the Bloomfield and the Annan.
At the Bloomfield, Eastern Kuku Yalanji people slept on grass and fan-palm leaves, and pulled sheets of paperbark over themselves in cold weather[3].
The Bloomfield bed
Anderson, at the Bloomfield in the late 1970s: 'Fan palm leaves were used as "tablecloths" and as seats and bunches of long bush grass served as mattresses on hard ground. Sheets of Melaleuca also sometimes served these same purposes, and additionally were used as blankets in cold weather'[3].
On country today
The Government blanket was issued by the police at Bloomfield by 1898, when Roth saw them being used as canoe sails[3]. Government blankets had reached Bloomfield by 1898, and by the 1970s paperbark sheets were 'sometimes' bedding and 'in cold weather' a blanket, which is still how a sheet of paperbark gets used on a river camp[3].
Everywhere
Names
bilangkurr 'blanket'. kararr 'a blanket, sheet, or grass bedding spread out to lie on'. kakarr 'grass; blanket to lie on, not to put over you', and 'also used as year, i.e. kararr jambul "two years"'[1]. buyku is the paperbark; wanjakan a ti-tree whose 'bark [is] also used for roof of house'; kiway and kiway-kiway 'cold'; wadil 'weather, rain or cold, entering'[1]. Roth's Koko-yimidir (Cape Bedford and Cooktown) lists give bo-du and put-yo for the Melaleuca with the note '[Blankets]', and in the Cape Bedford vocabulary the one word serves for 'Melaleuca (tea-tree) bark = blanket'[4][5]. The fig-bark blanket's names on the Tablelands and at Cardwell were kambilla and magulat, 'the name of the Ficus ehretioides from which derived'[2].
Blankets and beds
The paperbark blanket. Roth: 'Sheets of soft tea-tree (Melaleuca) bark are often to be found used as blankets in cold weather, in many districts, and would appear to answer the purpose admirably'[2]. His bark-stripping section adds the one bit of preparation: 'further treatment of the bark, e.g., the picking off of its inner surface with stiletto, etc., is necessary in connection with the manufacture of blankets, some canoes, and certain water-carriers'[6].
The fig-bark blanket. 'On other occasions the inner bark of various Fig-trees, e.g., the Ribbed-fig (Ficus pleurocarpa), Ficus ehretioides, undergoes special preparation before its conversion into a pliable coverlet.' At Atherton Roth watched a man climb a ribbed fig 'to a height of some forty feet and there remove a sheet of bark, the entire circumference of the trunk', by two ring cuts and a vertical cut, 'pounding along its connecting edge as it was being picked off the tree; in former times, he told me that this pounding was done with a stone'. The sheet, 'very moist on its inner surface', was forty-two by twenty inches. He rolled it, cut the outer bark across with the edge of a broken candlenut shell, and tore the outer layer off, 'which required no small amount of strength, judgment and skill'. Then, on a big exposed root cleared of its bark 'and used as a table', he hammered the inner surface of the sheet with a bat 'shaped like a narrow cricket-bat with handle cut-short ... about twenty-four by two inches', the blows 'struck sharply in a slanting direction at an angle with the run of the fibre, considerable force and rapidity being brought into requisition', drawing the sheet towards him so that all of it was struck and it became 'softer and more pliable, thinner, and correspondingly increased in surface area'. He doubled it, hammered again, and repeated the doubling and pounding twice more until the blanket was 'folded into a package, about a foot long, a size just convenient for carrying in a dilly-bag'. Opened and sun-dried, it measured four feet by two feet four inches 'and took between five and six hours to make'; a tear was mended with fibre twine and a pointed stick. The blankets Roth saw at Cairns and Cardwell were folded the same way[2]. The mallet of the Princess Charlotte Bay hinterland, 'similar to the model of the implement made by an aged native in the Atherton scrubs when showing me the old-time method of manufacturing a blanket', was a woman's tool, carried from camp to camp[6]. On the Tully, the Mallanpara bartered dilly-bags to the Cardwell people 'for which they receive bark-blankets'[7].
What is not here. 'The manufacture of Opossum-cloaks and Kangaroo-rugs is now a lost art in Queensland, and in the course of all my wanderings I have never seen a single specimen', Roth wrote in 1910; the Brisbane cloak Petrie described was thirty or forty possum skins sewn with kangaroo sinew and worn fur-side in[2]. Plaited blankets of reed stems and split pandanus, 'very warm for sleeping under on cold nights', were women's work on the Gulf rivers to 1899[2].
The bed. A hollow in the sand with a fire beside it and a windbreak of grass bundles or bloodwood boughs; grass bunches for a mattress, kakarr; fan-palm leaves to sit and eat on; and in the cold the fire inside the hut[8][3][1].
Which covering
- Paperbark sheet (buyku): soft, layered, the everyday blanket of 'many districts' and of Bloomfield[2][3].
- Hammered fig bark: thinner, pliable, folded into a foot-long packet; a rainforest and Tablelands thing (Atherton, Cairns, Cardwell)[2].
- Grass bedding (kararr, kakarr): under you, 'not to put over you'[1][3].
- Fan-palm leaves: floor, seat and tablecloth[3].
- The hut's bark sheets are stiffer, from stringybark and messmate, and go on the frame, not the bed[8].
- Possum cloak: southern, and gone by 1900[2].
Signs
- A paperbark with a sheet taken: the long pale scar where the outer layers were peeled[6].
- A fig scarred high up, forty feet from the ground, with the whole circumference gone[2].
- A root worn smooth beside a camp was the hammering table[2].
- The folded packet in a dilly bag, and the cricket-bat mallet among a woman's gear[2][6].
- Flattened grass beds and a ring of windbreak on the sand[8].
The trees
Roth's blanket figs, the ribbed fig and Ficus ehretioides, are rainforest figs of the Tablelands and the coast[2]. The blanket tree everywhere else is the paperbark, and which kinds grow where is set out under each place above.
The cold and the camp
A bed on the sand in the cold dry is open to the cold and the dew. The dry-season camp on the creek sand, the fire, the windbreak, the grass under and the bark over are one system; the same paperbark gave the hut its roof, the torch for night fishing, the wrapping for the earth oven and the caulking of a canoe[3][8][7]. See the year on country.
Seasons
Bark is taken 'at the end of the wet season when the sap is up and the bark slips', though paperbark peels in its outer layers at any time[6]. The blanket's season is the cold dry, when the nights are coldest: see each place above for how cold. The Atherton fig blanket took one man five to six hours, and the sheet had to be sun-dried[2].
Uses
- Blanket in cold weather[2][3].
- Mattress and floor: grass, fan-palm leaves, paperbark[3].
- Seat and tablecloth[3].
- A baby's wrap and the carrying cloth of the camp.
- Trade: bark blankets from Cardwell for Tully dilly-bags[7].
- Emu mimicry in the dances, with 'a bark or Government blanket' over the head[9].
Making the bed and the blanket
- Choose a big paperbark by the river with a long clean trunk; take the outer layers, which peel in sheets without a cut, or cut two rings and a vertical line and lift the sheet, tapping it loose with a stone as you go[6].
- Pick the inner surface clean of its loose papery layers with a pointed stick until the sheet is soft and even[6].
- Dry it in the sun flat, under a weight, so it does not curl[2].
- Use it over a grass mattress, fire on the windward side, feet to the fire[3][8].
The fig-bark blanket, as Roth watched it made[2]:
- Climb to clean trunk and take a sheet of bark the whole way round, two ring cuts and one vertical cut, pounding along the edge as it is picked off.
- On the ground, unroll it inner side up; roll it again lengthwise with the outer bark outside.
- Cut across the outer layer only, four or five inches from the end, with a sharp shell or candlenut-shell edge, so that it kinks and gives two free edges.
- Tear the outer bark off, the short piece first, then the long; discard it.
- Find a tree with a big exposed root, clear the root of bark for a table.
- Hammer the inner bark on its inner face with the edge of a flat bat about two feet by two inches, slanting blows across the grain, hard and fast, drawing the sheet toward you so every part is struck.
- Fold it double, outer side in, and hammer again; fold and hammer twice more, until it is a packet a foot long.
- Open it and dry it in the sun. Mend any tear with fibre twine and a pointed stick.
A grass bed: bunches of long grass laid thick on the sand in a shallow hollow, kararr; fan-palm leaves on top where you sit[3][1].
Safety
- Dry paperbark and dry grass are tinder; the fire goes beside the bed, not under the blanket, and never unattended in the dry; permits apply in fire season[10].
- Ask the Traditional Owners before cutting bark on their country.
- Do not ring-bark a tree for a blanket; take outer layers only, or one side of the trunk[6].
- A forty-foot climb for fig bark is the Atherton man's skill, not a thing to try alone[2].
On Country today
Possum cloaks and kangaroo rugs were 'a lost art in Queensland' by 1910[2]; the paperbark sheet outlasted them. Where the tree grows, and whose country it is, is set out under each place above.
Language
bilangkurr 'blanket'; kararr 'a blanket, sheet, or grass bedding spread out to lie on'; kakarr 'grass; blanket to lie on, not to put over you'; buyku paperbark; wanjakan a ti-tree used for roofing; kiway, kiway-kiway 'cold'; wadil 'weather, rain or cold, entering'; balnji 'camping out'; yamba-yamba 'household goods'[1].
References
- Hershberger, H. D. & Hershberger, R. (1982). Kuku-Yalanji Dictionary. Work Papers of SIL-AAB, Series B, Volume 7. With Toby Bloomfield, Roy Friday, Billy Roberts, Hector and Doris Sykes, Joe Walker and others. www.sil.org/resources/archives/18038
- Roth, W. E. (1910). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 15: Decoration, deformation, and clothing. Records of the Australian Museum 8(1). — Sect. 56, bark blankets (Atherton) archive.org/details/biostor-52864
- Anderson, C. (1996). Traditional material culture of the Kuku-Yalanji of Bloomfield River, North Queensland. Records of the South Australian Museum 29(1): 63–83. Based on fieldwork at Wujal Wujal in the late 1970s and early 1980s. — Hunting (spears, spear-throwers, harpoons); fishing (stupefacients); manufacturing (gums and resins); post-contact bush component archive.org/details/RecordsSouthAus29Sout
- Roth, W. E. (1901). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 3: Food — its search, capture, and preparation. Brisbane: Government Printer. Bloomfield River information from the Hislops. — Sect. 6 'Cooking'; plant list ('Castanospermum australe', 'Dioscorea sativa', 'Elettaria Scottiana', 'Nymphaea'); plant list, 'Melaleuca sp.' [Blankets] archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
- Roth, W. E. (1901). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 2: The structure of the Koko-Yimidir language. Brisbane: Government Printer. — Vocabulary, 'mu-rong-al' archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
- Roth, W. E. (1904). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 7: Domestic implements, arts, and manufactures. Brisbane: Government Printer. — Sect. 10 'Fire-tongs'; sect. 37 'Hammers — Stone' and sect. 38 'Hammers — Wood (Mallets and Anvils)', Princess Charlotte Bay hinterland archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
- Roth, W. E. (1910). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 14: Transport and Trade. Records of the Australian Museum 8(1). — Sects. 14–15, dug-out canoes from the Flinders Group to Cape Grafton archive.org/details/biostor-52863
- Roth, W. E. (1910). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 16: Huts and shelters. Records of the Australian Museum 8(1): 55–66. — Sect. 5, dome huts (Bloomfield, Princess Charlotte Bay); sect. 11, ridge-pole huts and sleeping platforms (hinterland of Princess Charlotte Bay, lower Normanby) archive.org/details/records-australian-museum-8-055-066
- Roth, W. E. (1902). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 4: Games, sports and amusements. Brisbane: Government Printer. — Sect. 4 'Realistic games (animals)' archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
- Queensland Fire Department. Fire permits: lighting fires in Queensland. fire.qld.gov.au/safety-education/using-fire-outdoors/lighting-fires-in-queensland
- Bureau of Meteorology. Climate statistics for Australian locations: Musgrave (station 028007, 79 m), 1887–2012. www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_028007.shtml
- Queensland Herbarium. Regional ecosystem descriptions, Cape York Peninsula bioregion: 3.3.10a (Melaleuca fluviatilis fringing woodland), 3.3.24 (Eucalyptus leptophleba woodland on riverine levees, Laura area), 3.10.6 and 3.10.10 (Darwin stringybark woodland on sandstone), 3.3.66 (lakes and lagoons). apps.des.qld.gov.au/regional-ecosystems/
- Standley, P.-M. (2019). The importance of campfires to effective conservation. PhD thesis, James Cook University. Records the fire and country knowledge of Kuku Thaypan Elders Dr Tommy George and Dr George Musgrave. researchonline.jcu.edu.au/64274/
- Atlas of Living Australia. Occurrence records of the genus Melaleuca (346 records, 1932–2023; including M. viridiflora 131, M. leucadendra 27, M. stenostachya 27, M. fluviatilis 17) and of Ficus pleurocarpa (none) in a box of about 90 × 85 km around the middle Hann River, Laura and western Rinyirru (lat −15.6 to −14.8, long 143.5 to 144.3), queried 28 October 2026. biocache.ala.org.au/occurrences/search?q=genus%3AMelaleuca&fq=decimalLatitude%3A%5B-15.6%20TO%20-14.8%5D&fq=decimalLongitude%3A%5B143.5%20TO%20144.3%5D
- Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. Nature, culture and history: Rinyirru (Lakefield) National Park (CYPAL) (web page, last updated 1 July 2024; accessed 28 October 2026). parks.qld.gov.au/parks/rinyirru-lakefield/about/culture
- Ross on behalf of the Cape York United #1 Claim Group v State of Queensland (No 21) (Possum determination) [2023] FCA 1316 (Federal Court of Australia, 2 November 2023). — Determination area (upper Hann and Kennedy rivers); prescribed body corporate; affidavit evidence on hunting and fishing www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2023/2023fca1316
- Ross on behalf of the Cape York United #1 Claim Group v State of Queensland (No 20) (Thaypan determination) [2023] FCA 1315 (Federal Court of Australia, 2 November 2023). — Determination area and waters; prescribed body corporate (Awu-Laya Indigenous Corporation); affidavit evidence on hunting www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2023/2023fca1315
- Hunter-Gatherer Language Database (University of Texas at Austin). Lexical feature 'paperbark' (Melaleuca sericea, M. stenostachya): Kuku-Thaypan, Yalanji, Guugu Yimidhirr, Uw-Olkol (accessed 28 October 2026). huntergatherer.la.utexas.edu/lexical/feature/310
- Bureau of Meteorology. Climate statistics for Australian locations: Palmerville (station 028004), records from 1889 (accessed 5 October 2026). www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_028004.shtml
- Queensland Herbarium, Regional Ecosystem 9.3.14 (Einasleigh Uplands): Melaleuca fringing woodland on channels and levees. Fire management guidelines. Queensland Government Regional Ecosystem Description Database. apps.des.qld.gov.au/regional-ecosystems/details/?re=9.3.14
- Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants (RFK8), Melaleuca leucadendra. CSIRO / Lucidcentral. apps.lucidcentral.org/rainforest/text/entities/melaleuca_leucadendra.htm
- Wikipedia. Melaleuca stenostachya (fibre-barked teatree). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melaleuca_stenostachya
- Atlas of Living Australia. Occurrence records of the genus Ficus within 30 km and 60 km of the Karma Waters homestead (16.618° S, 144.605° E), queried 6 October 2026 (4 records within 30 km; about 120 within 60 km). biocache.ala.org.au/occurrences/search?q=genus%3AFicus&lat=-16.6179&lon=144.6047&radius=60
- Australian Tropical Rainforest Plants (RFK8), Ficus racemosa (cluster fig, figwood). CSIRO / Lucidcentral. apps.lucidcentral.org/rainforest/text/entities/ficus_racemosa.htm
- Queensland Herbarium, Regional Ecosystem 9.11.26 (Einasleigh Uplands): Eucalyptus leptophleba and/or E. cullenii and/or Corymbia clarksoniana +/- E. platyphylla woodland on undulating terrain to rolling hills. Fire management guidelines. Queensland Government Regional Ecosystem Description Database. apps.des.qld.gov.au/regional-ecosystems/details/?re=9.11.26
- Karma Waters Station. About: location, native title (web page, accessed 5 October 2026). www.karmawatersstation.com/about.html
- Karma Waters Station. Bush Camping at Karma Waters Station (web page, accessed 5 October 2026). www.karmawatersstation.com/bush-camping.html
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