The Kabi Kabi people, also spelt Gubbi Gubbi, Gabi Gabi, and other variants, are an Aboriginal Australian people native to South Eastern Queensland. During the Australian frontier wars of the 19th century, there were several mass killings of Kabi Kabi people by settlers. They are now classified as one of several Murri language groups in Queensland. A 2024 determination granted non-exclusive native title rights over an 365,345-hectare (902,790-acre) area of land and waters on the Sunshine Coast.
As is often the case, ethnonyms distinguishing one tribe from another select the word used by any one group for the concept "no", which is the meaning of kabi/gubi/gabi.[1][2] However, AIATSIS's Austlang database prefers Gubbi Gubbi.[3]
The name Gubbi Gubbi, as shown in early history books, has been used in recent times interchangeably with Kabi Kabi. AIATSIS favours Gubbi Gubbi as for the language, but also gives other spellings and name variants.[4][5] but in recent publications has referred to the people as Kabi Kabi.[6] Native title claims have been lodged in the name of Kabi Kabi people by the Kabi Kabi Aboriginal Corporation.[7]
There is a dance group called Gubbi Gubbi Dance Troupe that performs traditional dance[8] and Welcomes to Country.[9]
John Mathew, who lived among them, described the Gubbi Gubbi lands as roughly coextensive with the Mary River Basin, though stretching beyond it north to the Burrum River and south along the coast itself.[10] He estimated their territory to cover 8,200 square miles (21,000 km2). According to Norman Tindale, however, the Gubbi Gubbi people were an inland group living in the Wide Bay–Burnett area, and their lands extended over 3,700 square miles (9,600 km2) and lay west of Maryborough. The northern borders ran as far as Childers and Hervey Bay. On the south, they approached the headwaters of the Mary River and Cooroy. Westwards, they reached as far as the Coast Ranges and Kilkivan.[11] Gubbi Gubbi country is currently located between Pumicestone Road, near Caboolture in the south, through to Childers in the north. Their country was originally rain forest, with cleared areas created by regular firing of the scrub.[11][a]
There have been a number of native title claims by various groups of contemporary Gubbi Gubbi/Kabi Kabi people, all through the same representative body, the Southern and Western Queensland Region.[13][14]
Other groups of descendants, using the "Kabi Kabi" spelling of the name, have made a total of six applications for native title, with some earlier ones combined into later ones and one as of 2021[update] still active. The first two, made in 2006, were discontinued, while the third in the same year was dismissed.[14] Claims made in 2013,[15][16] and 2016 were combined, resulting in a sixth claim in 2018, which is still active.[14] This claim covers an area from Redcliffe, not far north of Brisbane to around Isis Junction, in the Bundaberg region,[17] but excluding Maryborough.[18]
In June 2024, the Federal Court under Justice Berna Collier formally recognised a claim over 365,345 ha (902,790 acres) of land and waters on the Sunshine Coast, including Gympie, Noosa, Maroochydore, Caloundra, Bribie Island, and Mudjimba Island. The ruling was significant for two reasons: if was the first to have been granted over an urbanised area on the east coast, and the first occasion on which the right to "take resources from the area for any purpose" was recognised in South East Queensland. Former rights have been restricted to "personal, communal, and non-commercial purposes". The decision relates to Part A of the Kabi Kabi people's claim, with two further parts still to be determined.[7] The rights are non-exclusive, meaning that they are subject to state and federal laws, and do not include freehold land. The area includes many sacred and ceremonial sites, including bora rings, and sites where paintings and axe-grinding stones exist. The determination makes no difference to residents living within the boundaries of the title, and there is no right to block access to anyone from crown land, but that Kabi Kabi people could help to share their cultural heritage, as well as activities such as cultural burning to help care for the environment. The Sunshine Coast Council hopes to increase public access to culturally significant land, and provide educational tools such as signposts and information boards on walking trails.[19][20]
The Dictionary of the Gubbi-Gubbi and Butchulla languages, compiled by Jeanie Bell, with assistance from Amanda Seed, was published in 1994. The dictionary includes both Gubbi-Gubbi and Butchulla language vocabularies with an English finder-list; sources of words given; and notes on phonology, morphology, and syntax.[21]
Some Gubbi Gubbi/ Kabi Kabi died in the mass poisoning of upwards of 60 Aboriginal people on the Kilcoy run in 1842.[24] A further 50-60 are said to have been killed by food laced with arsenic at Whiteside Station in April 1847.[25] As colonial entrepreneurs pushed into their territory to establish pastoral stations, they together with the Butchulla set up a fierce resistance: from 1847 to 1853, 28 squatters and their shepherds were killed.[26]
In June 1849 two youths, the Pegg brothers, were speared on the property while herding sheep. Gregory Blaxland, the 7th son of the eponymous explorer Gregory Blaxland took vengeance, heading a vigilante posse of some 50 squatters and station hands and, at Bingera, ambushed a group of 100 sleeping myalls of the "Gin gin tribe" who are usually identified now as the Gubbi Gubbi.[27] They had feasted on stolen sheep. Marksmen picked off many, even those fleeing by diving into the Burnett River. The slaughter was extensive, and the bones of many of the dead were uncovered on the site many decades later.[28][29][30] Blaxland was in turn killed in a payback action sometime in July–August 1850. His death was revenged in a further large-scaled massacre of tribes in the area.[b]
The escaped convict James Davis, in addition to dwelling with several other tribes, is said to have lived for a time with Kabi Kabi people.[31]
John Mathew, a clergyman turned anthropologist, also spent five years with them at Manumbar and mastered their language. During his time there he met Kabi bushranger Johnny Campbell, and described their society in a 1910 monograph, Two Representative Tribes of Queensland.[32][33] Mathew also wrote an extensive notebook on the language of the Kabi Kabi people, which is now held in State Library of Queensland.[34] The Kabi Kabi people he grew up with numbered no more than a score by the early 1880s,[35] and by 1906, after they had been forcibly removed to the Barambah reserve (anAboriginal reserve created under the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897), he stated that only 3-4 full-blooded members of the group remained among the "remnants".[36][37]
^John Mathew's description of the Gubbi Gubbi people he knew describes their land as embracing 'the Manumbar Run in the south-west corner of the Burnett District, the country watered by the Amamoor and Koondangoor creeks, tributaries of the Mary River, and the Imbil Station (Mathew 1887, p. 152).
^A force was organized among all these settlers and their employees, and they set out on their mission of revenge guided by the friendly gin already referred to. The fugitive blacks were tracked down the Burnett River, where they had foregathered at a place now called Paddy's Island, not far from the mouth of the river. It was estimated by the white party that there were about a thousand blacks congregated here when the attack was made, and the result was the blacks suffered severely. The avenging whites were determined to end the antagonistic blacks' attitude towards their settlements. It is not known how many blacks were killed in this fight, but they must have numbered hundreds; but it is also known that a large number escaped into the Wongarra scrub on the south side of the river. This attack really broke the power of the blacks in this region. They continued to be hostile often in individual cases, but were never afterwards a serious menace (Laurie 1952, p. 713).
