Canoes, rafts and crossing water

Names

kaljan is 'outrigger canoe'. marrakan is both the red cedar tree and the 'dugout canoe made of red cedar wood', the way warrbi is both the house and the axe that cut it^[1]. The parts: dukul 'head', also 'bow of boat'; bijikan 'stern of a boat'; birungubay 'paddle, oar', often shortened to biruwybay or birubay, and birungubaynja manil 'to row'; warkal 'bailer shell used in the old time for a billy'; wuljil 'to empty out, bail out'; mararr, now 'cloth', but 'originally a sail made of plaited palm leaves'^[1]. The trees: wawuburra 'cottontree. Canoes were made out of these and the candlenut tree, bilar'; bilar the candlenut; and one of the two words marril, a mangrove 'with apple-like seed only much bigger. The wood is hard and is good for making oars'^[1]. The water: maraji and mariji-y 'to swim; to swim across or through water'; janjil 'wash, bathe, swim'; mala-kural 'good diver'; dajali 'deep water'; walngkal 'to float, as a log on the water'; walmba 'log'; yanday 'things that float up on the beach such as timber, usable things only'; kumuy 'fluorescence under water (salt water), as behind a boat in the water at night'; yulal 'board, plank', the word Roth heard at Cape Bedford for a European boat 'so applied to the planks with which it is built'^[1][3].

Roth's canoe vocabulary from Cape Bedford is Guugu Yimithirr, the northern neighbours: wangga for the dug-out as a whole, the bow 'forehead', the stern 'buttocks', the keel 'backbone', the ribs, the float 'little finger', and dadetchin for the peg timber; the Kungganji of Cape Grafton called the float bunul, their word for mullet, 'indicative of its habit of skimming along the surface of the water'^[3]. On the Endeavour River the log laid across a creek as a bridge was walmba, 'the same term as is applied to the forked limb put against a tree in order to climb it': the Kuku Yalanji dictionary's walmba 'log' is the same word^[3][1].

The Bloomfield dug-out

What Roth saw, 1898–1902. Along the coast from the Flinders Group to Cape Grafton the dug-out has one outrigger; 'following upon this, to ensure rigidity of the surviving float, an increase in the number of booms; to restore the centre of gravity of the body to the vertical is the intervention of comparatively large pegs between the boom-extremities and the float'. Going south, 'the stern projection gradually becomes more and more developed, until it closely approximates that of the bows, both extremities simultaneously changing from oval to square. The booms are all double, i.e., in sets of two, and form a staging on to which the spears and harpoons may be laid or tied'^[3]. Between the Flinders and the Endeavour two wash-boards are lashed along the outside of the gunwale and the booms pegged through them; 'they have already disappeared at the Bloomfield River, where the booms pierce the gunwale direct' (his Plate VI fig. 2, the photograph at the top of this page). 'The number of double booms will depend upon the size of the vessel, not less than four nor more than eight having been observed, a double one occasionally being made to pierce the extreme bows direct; their two components are lashed, one above, the other below, to the angle formed by the tops of the crossed pegs morticed into the float' (his fig. 13, on this page)^[3]. At Cape Bedford, 'where the best specimens of canoe are to be seen, and whence the cast-offs and inferior ones are traded to Cooktown', the pegs were of a special timber and 'the floats are cut from a peculiarly light wood which is cast up on the beach, and preserved until required'. Because the bow is made from the wider butt of the log, the float sits a little closer to the hull in front than behind, so 'the total width of the vessel as a whole is practically the same fore and aft'. 'The Bloomfield River dug-outs only differ from the Cape Bedford and Flinders type in the absence of wash-boards'^[3]. From the Mossman south to Cape Grafton the dug-out 'is cut very square at either extremity', so narrow that 'the occupants sitting on the double-booms are obliged to have their legs crossed one over the other, and yet I have known five or six people at one time travelling all the way from Port Douglas to beyond Cairns'; made 'from at least five kinds of timber', up to fifteen or sixteen feet^[3]. Cape Grafton was the southern limit of the dug-out^[3].

Where the dug-out came from. Roth judged the dug-outs of the Queensland coast 'of Papuan origin', the double-outrigger canoe of the Batavia (Wenlock) River being the original form (his fig. 10, on this page), with one float dropped and the booms multiplied as the type travelled south; Torres Strait sailing canoes came 'a long way down the Barrier Reef during the north west season'^[3]. The Kuku Yalanji canoe is the southern end of that line.

Which craft for which water

• The dug-out outrigger (kaljan): the sea-going boat, for the reef, the estuary, turtle and dugong, and for night fishing on the tidal river; 'distinctly a sea-going craft as compared with the bark-canoe'^[3][2].
• The bark canoe: one, two or three sheets of bark sewn with lawyer cane; 'in the main river-craft', though taken across to islands in fair weather. Roth records them from the Johnstone River south and on the Gulf coast, not on Kuku Yalanji country; the Tully method is given below as the nearest recorded^[3].
• The log raft: four or five logs tied with lawyer cane at the ends, 'used rather in times of flood than at others, and generally discarded after use', among the scrub people from the Tully to the Mulgrave; see rafts^[3].
• The log float: 'at the mouth of the Mitchell River, and some of the rivers to the south of it', a cut trunk of a very light tree five or six feet long, which the swimmer straddles 'somewhat in the position of a child riding a hobby-horse', balancing with one hand and keeping the other free for spears^[3].
• Swimming and wading: the inland default, below.
• A toy canoe of bark or palm leaf, which is how children at Bloomfield learned the shape^[2].

Signs

• The narrow hull. A Kuku Yalanji dug-out is recognisable in any old photograph by its slit of a gunwale, six to nine inches wide on a hull fifteen to twenty-two inches in the bilge, and by its one float on the right^[4][2].
• Booms through the gunwale, no wash-boards: the Bloomfield mark, against the boarded canoes of Cape Bedford and the Endeavour^[3].
• A platform at each end for the fire and the harpooner^[4][3].
• Canoe trees: a big red cedar, candlenut or cotton tree gone from the river bank; the stump and chips of a stone-axe felling^[2].
• Light driftwood (yanday) put aside above the tide line was float timber waiting^[3][1].
• A log across a creek that did not fall there: walmba, the bridge^[3].
• On the river at night, a torch in the bow meant spearing, not travelling^[2].

Canoe trees and where they grow

The hull trees are soft rainforest and river-bank trees of the coast: red cedar, candlenut and the cotton tree^[2][1]. King's Erythrina indica, the coral tree, is a soft, light, fast-growing tree of the same coastal scrubs; on the Endeavour Roth found hulls of cotton tree, milky mangrove (Excoecaria), Alstonia and Sonneratia; at Cape Bedford of brown cedar and Gmelina^[4][3]. The float 'is not usually the same as that employed for the body, but of a more buoyant variety'^[3]. Paddles came from the mangrove Xylocarpus granatum, the cannonball mangrove, and the dictionary's marril; the outrigger lashings from lawyer cane; the turtle-rope from kuralbi and the barks of Sterculia and Hibiscus (string); the gum to seal the ends from the brown cedar^[2].

The canoe in the country

The canoe is what turned the reef, the islands and the tidal river into country that could be hunted. From the bow platform a man harpooned turtle with a kuralbi rope coiled in the prow, while two others paddled and watched; at night on the estuary one person 'sat at the front of the boat holding aloft a burning paperbark torch' and another speared the fish that came to the light, the mullet shoals of the late dry above all^[2]. Stingrays, rock cod, coral cod, red emperor and black-tip shark were speared from it; it carried people to the islands for crabs and oysters, and up the river to the camps^[2][3]. It needed the axe and the adze, fire, lawyer cane, gum, the bailer shell, and a canoe tree; and the cast-off canoes of Cape Bedford were themselves trade goods to Cooktown^[3][2]. What rides under it: the saltwater crocodile (bilngkumu), which is why Roth's chapter on crossing water opens with auguries and diving, and why the canoe, not the swim, was the way across a tidal river^[3].

Seasons

Canoe timber was cut after the first storms with the other big-timber work, when the sap was up and the logs were green and easier to hollow^[2]. The canoe's working season was the dry and the calm weather: turtle and dugong hunting, the mullet runs of the late dry, and the trips to the islands 'only when the wind and weather are favourable'^[2][3]. The Torres Strait canoes came south on the north-west wind of the wet and went home on the south-east trade^[3]. See the year on country.

Uses

• Hunting turtle and dugong with the harpoon from the bow platform^[2][5].
• Night spearing on the tidal river by torchlight; spearing stingray and reef fish^[2].
• Carrying six or seven people, or two men and two big turtles; travel along the coast and to the islands^[2][3].
• Carrying fire on the end platform, on clay or sand^[4][3].
• A staging for spears and harpoons across the double booms^[3].
• Trade: worn canoes went from Cape Bedford to Cooktown^[3].
• Crossing a crocodile river without swimming it^[3].
• The log raft and log float: crossing and travelling on a flooded river with spears kept dry^[3].

Making and handling the craft

The dug-out, from Anderson's Bloomfield account, Roth's Cape Bedford description (which he says the Bloomfield canoe matched except for the wash-boards) and King's measurements^[2][3][4]:

1. Choose and fell the tree: red cedar, candlenut or cotton tree, big enough for a hull up to seven metres; the wider butt end will be the bow^[2][3].
2. Shape the ends into a bow and a stern, each with a projecting platform fifteen to twenty inches long^[4][3].
3. Hollow the log: burn the inside out and scrape it clean with adzes; Roth saw it done with fire and 'native gouges', and by 1904 with a piece of barrel-hoop or ground-down rasp wedged into a split handle up to twenty-five inches long, 'gripped with both hands', at the Endeavour and the Bloomfield^[2][3][6]. Keep the opening narrow: six to nine inches at the gunwale on a fifteen-inch bilge^[4].
4. Make the float from a much lighter wood; light driftwood saved above the tide line is what Cape Bedford used^[3].
5. Cut the pegs from a hard timber and mortice them into the float in crossed pairs^[3].
6. Fit four to eight double booms through the gunwale on the right-hand side, each pair lashed with lawyer vine, one above and one below, to the angle of the crossed pegs; the float stands out about two feet^[3][2][4].
7. Seal and finish: gum on the ends and any cracks; a small peg forward to tie the harpoon line to; a stretcher across the hull if the sides pull in^[2][3].
8. Make the paddles (birungubay) of mangrove wood with a long narrow blade, a pole for the shallows, and keep a bailer shell (warkal) aboard^[2][3][1].
9. Launch: three people drag it to the water's edge, pole out 'one at the bows, the other at the stern, until such time as the water is deep enough for the paddles', then paddle with both hands, 'on either side of the canoe alternately'^[3].
10. Load it low: sit one behind the other on the booms or on sticks laid across the gunwale, legs crossed in the narrowest canoes; the steersman at the stern; the harpooner standing on the bow platform; the fire on its clay at the end^[3][4].

A single-sheet bark canoe, the Tully River method, a neighbouring craft given because no Kuku Yalanji bark canoe is recorded^[3]: strip a long sheet of bark from one of the canoe-bark trees (on the Tully, five kinds, one of them Calophyllum; their bark 'will strip more or less at any time of the year'); heat one end over a fire and fold the whole length lengthways, outer bark outwards; clamp the heated end in a vice of two switches tied round a bundle of grass and driven into the ground (Roth's fig. 4, on this page); jam in a spreader to set the shape; cut the end to a curve with a sharp shell, 'from below upwards, through both portions of the fold'; overcast the cut with split lawyer cane through holes drilled with a wallaby bone, folding in tea-tree bark, 'which swells when moistened', at the bottom of the seam; do the stern the same with a wider spreader; sew two tapered withies and unsplit lawyer cane along the inside as a gunwale; press five or six bent bark strips inside as ribs, held by split-cane hoops tucked under the gunwale; sew one tie across the middle; take out the spreaders; fix a stone anchor on a rope through a hole by the bow. One person, kneeling, paddles with a small oval of bark or a pearl shell in each hand. It took 'a little over a day to make', lasts long if kept out of the sun, and a crack 'is sewn up with intervening tea-tree bark and covered with bee's-wax' or gum^[3]. The three-sheet canoe of the Whitsundays (fig. 9) uses one sheet for the bottom and two for the sides^[3].

A log raft, the Tully to Mulgrave method: four or five logs of a light timber cut off blunt, 'tied, while afloat, with a length of lawyer-cane at the two ends only', first round the outside logs and then with a frapping turn between each log; a few cross-pieces at one end with tea-tree bark and sand on them so 'a fire can thus be kept burning'; no paddle, 'only a pole which can both steer and punt it', one or two people; made for a flood and left afterwards^[3]. See rafts.

Crossing a river without a boat, from Roth's transport chapter^[3]: 'the native will rather wade across a stream than go to the exertion of swimming it, and will often make a comparatively long detour to find a suitable ford'; where the trees meet overhead, climb across the branches; use a fallen log or lay one (walmba); carry goods in the teeth, on the head on a ring pad of tea-tree bark or grass, or 'in a bark or dug-out wooden vessel propelled in front' (a trough). Cross in company, 'in more or less close formation with a good deal of splashing and shouting'. 'A river in flood is met by diving across close to the bottom, where the natives say the current is never so strong.' Where a crocodile river must be crossed, dive and glide along the bottom, stirring up the mud if one is seen; when diving for lily seed in a suspected pool, keep a watcher on the bank or in a tree to splash the water with a stick at the first 'long streaky film of fine bubbles'. 'The Princess Charlotte Bay Natives never consider it safe to swim even silently on the surface of these waters, however clear they may be, when crocodiles are about'^[3].

Safety

• Crocodiles. The whole of Roth's chapter on crossing water is about bilngkumu; a tidal river is crossed in a canoe or not at all^[3].
• Flood. Do not try to cross a river in flood: wait, or go a long way round to a ford^[3].
• The narrow hull capsizes without its float; King noted that the outrigger was what 'prevented its liability to overset'. Sit low and keep the weight on the float side^[4][3].
• Fire aboard goes on clay or sand at the end platform, never on the hull^[4][3].
• A dry log float rolls; the old method straddled it with the thick end in front^[3].

On Country today

The trees, the cane, the bailer shells and the words are all still there. Fishing and hunting from the water on native title country, by any means, is covered by section 211 of the Native Title Act 1993^[7][8]. If you have seen a canoe made, or know the trees that were used on the inland rivers, the contribution box below is for that.

Language

kaljan 'outrigger canoe'; marrakan 'dugout canoe made of red cedar wood'; dukul 'bow of boat'; bijikan 'stern of a boat'; birungubay 'paddle, oar'; birungubaynja manil 'to row'; warkal 'bailer shell'; wuljil 'to bail out'; mararr 'sail of plaited palm leaves'; wawuburra 'cottontree'; bilar 'candlenut'; marril mangrove 'good for making oars'; mariji-y 'to swim across'; janjil 'bathe, swim'; mala-kural 'good diver'; dajali 'deep water'; walngkal 'to float'; walmba 'log'; yanday 'usable things that float up on the beach'; kumuy 'fluorescence behind a boat at night'; yulal 'board, plank'; jalun 'sea'; bana 'water'; wangkar 'upriver'; bilngkumu 'saltwater crocodile'; kalka 'fishing spear'^[1].

Images

References

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. King, P. P. (1827). Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia, performed between the years 1818 and 1822. London: John Murray. Vol. 1: Blomfield's Rivulet (the Bloomfield River), 26 June 1819, and Endeavour River, July 1819; Vol. 2: Trinity Bay, June 1821. www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11203
5. 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') archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
6. Roth, W. E. (1904). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 7: Domestic implements, arts, and manufactures. Brisbane: Government Printer. — Sect. 10 'Fire-tongs' archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
7. Australian Law Reform Commission. Review of the Native Title Act 1993 (DP 82), ch. 8: Relevant provisions in the Native Title Act (s 211). www.alrc.gov.au/publication/review-of-the-native-title-act-1993-dp-82/8-the-nature-and-content-of-native-title/relevant-provisions-in-the-native-title-act/
8. Western Yalanji Aboriginal Corporation & CRC for Developing Northern Australia (2020). Western Yalanji Land Use and Economic Diversification Plan. CC BY 4.0. — Native Title Determinations 1–4 (pp. 13–18); ‘Fire Management and Carbon Farming’ (pp. 32–33); ‘Pastoralists’ crcna.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/westernyalanjilanduseplan_nov2020.pdf
9. Bureau of Meteorology, Water Data Online. Station 105001B, Hann River at Sandy Creek: daily and monthly mean discharge 1968–2026 (recent data provisional), retrieved 28 October 2026. No day of zero mean flow in 20,711 days of record; mean flow highest in February–March, lowest in September–November. www.bom.gov.au/waterdata/
10. Queensland Government, WetlandInfo. Normanby catchment story: physical features (springs and base flow). wetlandinfo.detsi.qld.gov.au/wetlands/ecology/processes-systems/water/catchment-stories/normanby/norm-physical.html
11. 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/
12. Wikipedia. Hann River (Queensland) (accessed 28 October 2026). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hann_River_(Queensland)
13. 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
14. Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (2013). Rinyirru (Lakefield) Aggregation Management Statement 2013. parks.desi.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/165771/rinyirru.pdf
15. Roth, W. E. (1902). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 4: Games, sports and amusements. Brisbane: Government Printer. — Sect. on string figures (cat's cradles): Plate XII fig. 2, 'Canoe', Princess Charlotte Bay archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
16. 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
17. 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
18. Karma Waters Station. About: location, native title (web page, accessed 5 October 2026). www.karmawatersstation.com/about.html
19. 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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