Stone, ochre & earth
Stone
Jangka is stone in Kuku Yalanji, and the dictionary has a word for each kind that matters: kulji 'pebbles, small stones', jalngarr 'flat rock', jinali 'smooth rock' and jundi 'pumice stone, carborundum stone'[1]. Stone was the old tool kit: the axe, kulbanmuku, 'originally a stone axe'; the quartz-headed war spear kuyan; pounding and grinding stones for zamia, black bean and gum; and the hot stones of the earth oven[1][2][3]. Stone is also country: the river crossings, the boulder mountains of Kalkajaka, and rocks that are story places[1][4]. Eastern Kuku Yalanji law has 'strong rules that stones and other things must not be removed from our Country'[5].
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 rises in the sandstone of the Great Dividing Range and runs across the Laura Basin to Rinyirru[9][10]. This is the sandstone country of the Quinkan rock art, where 'Evidence of Aboriginal occupation is dated to 34,000 BP and rock art to 27,000 BP'[11]. Around 1900 Roth found people here using hafted stone hammers, and the Kuku Thaypan Elders can still read the scars a stone tomahawk left on a tree[6][12].
Stone on country here
The rivers of the Laura Basin, the Laura, Normanby, North Kennedy and Morehead among them, 'rise in the sandstone escarpment of the Great Dividing Range and flow through the park into Princess Charlotte Bay'[10]. Rain seeps down through that high sandstone and comes out as the springs that keep the Hann running all year[13]. Darwin stringybark woodland is the regional ecosystem type of this sandstone[14]. One of the nine kinds of country the Kuku Thaypan Elders name is 'Debil Debil country on Stoney soil', a thicker, lower woodland on hard, lumpy ground[12].
Quinkan Country, the rock-art country around Laura, was put on the National Heritage List in 2018[11].
How people used stone here
The stone hammer (Roth, Princess Charlotte Bay hinterland, 1898)[6]. Its head was a 'sub-angular pebble', not flaked or ground, fixed into a handle the same way as an axe-head, with fibre twine and cement. It was used for tapping a sheet of bark loose from the tree and for breaking hard nuts such as pandanus. Roth found it 'in use throughout the Princess Charlotte Bay hinterland, in 1898, and again on the Palmer'. The Koko-warra called it ambianga and the stone axe-head ai-mu-an (Roth's spellings)[6].
Iron takes over. By 1900, on the Palmer and in the hinterland of Princess Charlotte Bay, ground-down scrap iron was 'rapidly replacing stone for scrapers' and was used for sharpening spear-tips[6].
The stone tomahawk on trees (Kuku Thaypan Elders)[12]. Bloodwood trees 'were utilised for sap and cut with a stone tommy hawk to gain the useful sticky substance'. Dr Tommy George could tell a stone tomahawk's sugarbag scar on an ironwood from a steel axe's: stone scars 'tend to be more rounded in the center and then wider to the surface of the tree, this indicates wedging the timber rather than just a straight cut through the wood'. A steel-axe scar is long and even, with no battering at the edges.
Ochre. The Kuku Thaypan have their own ochre colour; Dr Tommy George marked people 'in the ochre colour belonging to Awu Alaya'[12]. Around 1900 Bloomfield and Endeavour people carried red ochre and white clay inland toward the Laura to trade with the Koko-warra[7].
Respect here
The Elders list rock art, grinding grooves, stone tools and scar trees among the features of their country that wildfire and badly timed burning damage[12]. Rock art and other places belong to their custodians, and only some are open to visitors[12]. In Rinyirru (Lakefield) National Park: 'Do not collect souvenirs or interfere with cultural sites'[15]. Stone artefacts are protected under Queensland's Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003[8]. Leave them where they lie.
On country today
The upper Hann is the Possum People's country and the middle and lower Hann are Thaypan country, under native title determinations of November 2023[16][17]. Ask them before you go onto country.
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
Around Mount Carbine the stone has a mining history too[18].
Stone on country here
Around Mount Carbine the stone has its own history: the town grew up from 1890 around wolfram (tungsten) mines[18].
On country today
Western Yalanji native title was recognised in August 2026 over 170,827 ha, including the right to protect significant places[19].
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.
Eastern Kuku Yalanji country is hard-rock country, and its law says stones stay where they are: 'strong rules that stones and other things must not be removed from our Country'[5].
Stone on country here
Eastern Kuku Yalanji country is hard-rock country. Its best-known stone landmark is Kalkajaka (Black Mountain): a range of black granite boulders, some as big as houses, stacked on each other. It is an important meeting place for Eastern Kuku Yalanji people and the source of many Dreaming stories[4]. The dictionary lists Kalkajaka as 'Black Mountains (also the caves there)'[1]; the stories are the Traditional Owners' to tell.
Safety and respect here
Eastern Kuku Yalanji law has 'strong rules that stones and other things must not be removed from our Country', and when those rules are broken 'both people and Country get sick'[5]. In Kalkajaka National Park, do not break, alter or deface the rocks[4].
Jabalbina asks people in boats to keep away from two rocks (kulji) in the Bloomfield River at Middle Camp, an important story place[5].
On country today
Native title. Eastern Kuku Yalanji native title, recognised in August 2026, covers about 217,884 ha from the Annan River to the Daintree River and includes Kalkajaka National Park (CYPAL)[20].
Everywhere
Names
Stone words in the dictionary[1]:
- jangka 'stone'. (The dictionary's short gloss for this entry reads 'tree (this term is very rarely used for money)', which looks like a slip; its definition is 'stone'.)
- kulji 'pebbles, small stones', and also 'coins, money', a sense that is going out of use.
- jalngarr 'flat rock'.
- jinali 'smooth rock'; a rock surface that is smooth is dirka-dirka.
- jundi 'pumice stone, carborundum stone', the stone for rubbing and sharpening.
- binda-dijarr 'stony crossing'. Binda-dijarr is also the name of a place on the upper Daintree River.
Roth wrote down the Koko-yellanji (Kuku Yalanji) word for a stone axe-head as jangkawabi (his 1904 spelling), which looks as if it is built on jangka[6]. For the hot stones of the Bloomfield earth oven he wrote kurma[2], the dictionary's kurrma 'earth oven'[1].
Stone on country
In the rivers, stone makes the crossings (binda-dijarr) and the flat and smooth rocks people sit, work and wash on[1]. The dictionary marks several particular rocks, such as one in the Bloomfield River at Middle Camp (dilngku-baja), as story sites[1].
Where the stone came from
Most tool stone was picked up close to hand. Roth wrote that the simplest stone axe-head was just a water-worn pebble or boulder of the right shape[6]. Other stone came by trade. Around 1900 Bloomfield River people exported red ochre and several kinds of gum-cement. Bloomfield and Endeavour River people also travelled inland towards the Laura with red ochre and white clay for the Koko-warra people[7]. Cape Bedford people, just to the north, received quartz-tipped spears and 'a rough kind of fixed grind-stone' in exchange for their own goods[7].
On the Tully River, to the south, Roth recorded pumice collected in the river and at its mouth[3].
Uses
- Axes. Kulbanmuku 'axe, originally a stone axe'; waymbil and warrbi also mean 'axe'[1]. Roth found that across Queensland the same ground stone head served as axe, adze or wedge[6].
- Quartz spear points. The kuyan is a 'war spear with quartz head'[1]. Roth recorded the quartz-tipped spear as ku-yan at Cape Bedford, with the 'same name on the Bloomfield River'[3].
- Pounding and grinding food. On the Bloomfield, women pounded roasted and cracked zamia kernels (marra) into flour; black bean was baked, pounded and sifted; and the rootstock of Colocasia macrorrhiza was roasted and pounded between two stones in turn[2].
- Gum-cement. On the Bloomfield the gum of the brown cedar (Canarium australasicum) was pounded between two stones until soft, and used to join the parts of spears and, in the old days, to fix the stone axe-head into its handle[6].
- Oven stones. The Bloomfield earth oven cooked with heated stones[2]. Around the Annan and Endeavour rivers, the northern edge of Kuku Yalanji country, old discarded stone axe-heads were used to line ground-ovens. Roth thought this was why so few were left by 1900[2].
- Smoothing and sharpening. Jundi, pumice or carborundum stone[1]; nyurrbal 'to grind, sharpen'[1]. On the Tully River boomerangs were finished by rubbing them with pumice[3].
- Signs. Duburan is 'a directional sign... as a heap of stones or grass twisted to point the way'[1].
How stone tools were made and used
Making a ground-stone axe. By 1904 Roth called this a lost art in Queensland, and rebuilt the process from old men's accounts and from the axe-heads themselves. Most of what follows comes from districts well away from Kuku Yalanji country, as marked[6]:
- Get the stone. Choose a hard, water-worn pebble or boulder already close to the shape you need, or take a piece off a rock face. Kalkadun men (north-west of Cloncurry) said they lit a big fire against the rock for a long time, then threw water on it so the stone split. Georgina River men said an axe could also be started from a large flake.
- Rough it out. Knock off the rough parts and flake the edges, probably with stone hammers. At Boulia, a day was enough to rough a boulder into shape.
- Grind the edge. Rub the blade on hard sandstone, with water, at first in all directions and then along the line of the edge. This takes much longer than the roughing out. At Boulia this slow job was sometimes said to be women's work. Near Brisbane, a rock under the water of the North Pine River was pointed out as an old axe-grinding place.
- Make the handle. In the north and west the handle was a strip of wood bent double at the middle into two limbs. The stone was set in the bend with twine and beeswax or gum-cement, and the limbs were bound together just below the stone and again at the grip. On Cape York (Batavia and Embley rivers) the binding went only next to the stone, so the two limbs crossed and gripped the stone tighter, like pincers, when held.
- Fix it (Bloomfield River). On the Bloomfield, R. Hislop told Roth, the axe-head was cemented into its handle with gum of the brown cedar (Canarium australasicum), which Roth wrote t-chaln-ji. The dry lumps were picked off the tree, baked in leaves or warmed at a fire, then pounded between two stones until soft enough to use. Hands and stones were greased so the gum would not stick[6]. (Roth's t-chaln-ji sounds like the dictionary's jalnji, a tree whose gum 'is not poisonous, used for making spears'[1], but the dictionary calls jalnji a poison-nut tree, so whether they are the same tree is not settled.)
- Use it. The same head could be used as an axe, an adze or a wedge. From Cook's notes Roth judged that on the Endeavour River axes were used both with and without handles.
Grinding and pounding food[2]:
- Grinding means pushing a small, flat, rounded stone straight forward with the hand along a larger fixed slab, sprinkling on a little water now and then so that the crushed seed turns to paste.
- Pounding, with a stick or stone, takes turns with roasting. This is how bitter roots are made eatable.
- On the Bloomfield, zamia was roasted, cracked and kept four or five days, because it then pounds finer. The women pounded it into flour, sifted it through a fine palm-fibre bag and leached it overnight in running water.
Roth found that specialised grindstones were rare on the east coast. Cape Bedford people still had names for the fixed slab and the hand stone (dindi and mar-ngumai, their words) but no stones left to show him[6].
Hafting quartz on the kuyan spear (Cape Bedford, the same spear and name as on the Bloomfield)[3]:
- Knock off small white quartz flakes. By 1909 bottle glass was often used instead.
- Lay a length of gum-cement along the spear tip and run a slot up it with your thumbnail.
- Set the flakes in the slot in two opposite rows, like the teeth of a small comb, pointing forward and getting smaller towards the tip. Fix them with heat and careful work of the fingers.
Oven stones (Cape Bedford and Bloomfield)[2]: heat a number of stones well in a fire, rake out the stones and ashes, dig a hole where the fire was, and build the oven with the hot stones packed among the food under leaves, bark and earth.
Safety and respect
Leave the stones where they are. What may be taken is a matter for the law of each country; on the eastern coast that law is written down (see below).
Story places. Some rocks are story sites, and the dictionary marks several[1]. Ask before you go near or touch a notable rock.
Wet rock and river crossings. The language has words for the dangers: julbarr-warri 'to slip' (the dictionary's gloss is 'slippery rock'), jurrngaji 'to trip, as to trip over a stone', and kima-kima, an 'easy crossing of water, water isn't rushing as during a flood'[1]. Cross a stony crossing only when the water is easy, never in flood.
On Country today
Old stone tools are protected. Stone axe-heads, grinding stones and flaked stone are Aboriginal cultural heritage. Under Queensland's Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 it is an offence to harm Aboriginal cultural heritage, or to excavate, move or take it away, and anyone carrying out an activity has a duty of care not to harm it[8]. If you find one, leave it where it lies and tell the Traditional Owners.
Native title differs from place to place; see each place below. Visitors need the Traditional Owners' permission to go onto their country, and permission does not include taking stone away.
Language
nyurrbal 'to grind, sharpen'; nyandal 'to chop'; jalngkun 'sharp'; dudu 'blunt'; ngamar 'cliff, steep place'; manjal 'mountain'; jukar 'sand'; murbuy and wuba 'red ochre'; kambar 'white clay'; karrirrangkal 'coral crushed for lime'[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. (1901). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 3: Food — its search, capture, and preparation. Brisbane: Government Printer. Bloomfield River information from R. Hislop. — Sect. 4 'Preparations for cooking vegetables'; sect. 6 'Cooking'; plant list (Cycas media, Colocasia macrorrhiza, Castanospermum australe) archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
- Roth, W. E. (1909). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 13: Fighting Weapons. Records of the Australian Museum 7(4). — Sect. 4(c) quartz-tipped spears; boomerang manufacture (pumice) archive.org/details/biostor-52873
- Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. About Kalkajaka National Park (CYPAL) (web page, accessed 5 October 2026). parks.qld.gov.au/parks/kalkajaka/about
- Yalanjiwarra People & Jabalbina Yalanji Aboriginal Corporation (2016). Nganjinanga Bubu, Nganjinanga Jalun, Nganjinanga Bama Plan: Our Land, Our Sea, Our People Plan 2016–2021. Eastern Kuku Yalanji Indigenous Protected Area Management Plan, Stage 3. Mossman: Jabalbina. — Section 4 ('Our Culture'); Action 4.4 www.wettropicsplan.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Eastern-Kuku-Yalanji-Indgenous-Protected-Area-Management-Plan-Stage-3-Yalanjiwarra-Land-and-Sea-Country.pdf
- Roth, W. E. (1904). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 7: Domestic Implements, Arts, and Manufactures. Brisbane: Government Printer. — Sect. 13 'Gums, resins, cements' (Canarium australasicum); sect. 25 'Stone-celts'; sects. 36–37 pounders and hammers; sect. 45 'Grinding-stones'; sect. 37 'Hammers' (Princess Charlotte Bay hinterland, Palmer); scrapers of iron archive.org/details/northqueensland00landgoog
- Roth, W. E. (1910). North Queensland Ethnography, Bulletin No. 14: Transport and Trade. Records of the Australian Museum 8(1). — Part II 'Trade and barter', sects. 1–3 (Bloomfield River, Princess Charlotte Bay, Cape Bedford) archive.org/details/biostor-52863
- Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (Qld), sections 23–25 (cultural heritage duty of care; harming, excavating, relocating or taking away Aboriginal cultural heritage). www.legislation.qld.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/act-2003-079
- Wikipedia. Hann River (Queensland) (accessed 28 October 2026). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hann_River_(Queensland)
- 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
- Australian Government. Quinkan Country, National Heritage List place 106262 (listed 10 November 2018). www.environment.gov.au/heritage/places/national/quinkan-country
- 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/
- 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
- 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/
- Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. About Rinyirru (Lakefield) National Park (CYPAL) (web page, last updated 1 July 2024; accessed 28 October 2026). Park rules for visitors. parks.qld.gov.au/parks/rinyirru-lakefield/about
- 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
- Wikipedia. Mount Carbine, Queensland (accessed 5 October 2026). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Carbine,_Queensland
- National Indigenous Times (13 August 2026). 'Western Yalanji determination brings Cape York native title to the finish line.' nit.com.au/13-08-2026/25941/western-yalanji-determination-brings-cape-york-native-title-to-the-finish-line
- National Indigenous Times (12 August 2026). 'More than 100 ancestral lines united in Eastern Kuku Yalanji native title determination.' nit.com.au/12-08-2026/25896/more-than-100-ancestral-lines-united-in-eastern-kuku-yalanji-native-title-determination
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