I am a cultural custodian of the Gunnai People. I acknowledge the Kurnai People. The Gunnai and the Kurnai are closely related. ‘Gunaikurnai’ is the modern name of the Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation which includes the two identities together.

The Gunnai belong to the south-east of Victoria. We take in a lot of the Gippsland area. Our Country spans from west of Yiruk (Wilsons Promontory), along the Tarwin River to Mount Baw Baw and follows the Great Dividing Range to the east of the Snowy River and then down to near Point Hicks area, to the Tamboon Inlet. And it takes in all the coast and waterways between, including the coast of the Ninety Mile Beach from Yiruk to Point Hicks.

I don’t consider myself a traditional owner. I recognise as being a cultural custodian. I don’t own my mother or my Mother Earth. I’m a carer for my mother and the culture of the Gunnai people.

Part of my custodial role is to look after the language of song, story, and dance.

It is a big responsibility to keep it alive, to keep it relevant, to keep it true to its original form.

People like to separate, language, song, story, and dance. To me, it’s all connected. It’s all the communication of the cultural laws of lore.

Our language, songs, stories, and dance stretch back to the time of the land bridge.

The land bridge area takes in Yiruk or Wilsons Promontory which is a very significant place. Our neighbours the Bunurong/Boonwerung call it ‘Wamoon’. But to the Gunnai, Wilsons Promontory is Yiruk, which means ‘place of high degree’.

Yiruk is the most southerly point of mainland Australia today. It was one of the highest points of the land bridge. From Yiruk a network of islands go down to Lutruwita/Tasmania. They are all in alignment with Yiruk.

The flooding of the waters covered the land and so the different memories of the Ancestors are stored in certain places. When we’re doing our ceremonies, places like Yiruk have deep significance.

Our Ancestors travelled back and forth across the land bridge. If you look at the landscape, it makes sense that when sea levels were lower the Gunnai Country was on the eastern side of the land bridge. The Tarwin River flows out into the land bridge and it is the border between the Bratauraloong Gunnai and the Bunurong/Boonwerung. Therefore, the line of mountains, which are now islands, of the land bridge are within Gunnai country.

That’s where our Ancestors performed ceremonies, hunted, and collected our foods.

A lot of people think that Lutruwita/Tasmania is cut off from mainland Australia. But it’s not really cut off, it’s still connected. The land bridge wasn’t something that just happened during the ice age, it’s always been there. It’s just that it got flooded. The land bridge is still there, but there’s water over the top of it.

Yiruk/Wamoon/Wilsons Promontory is the most southerly point of mainland Australia today. To the Gunnai, Wilsons Promontory is called Yiruk, which means ‘place of high degree’. It was one of the highest points of the land bridge. From Yiruk a network of islands go down to Lutruwita/Tasmania. They are all in alignment with Yiruk. Here the promontory stretches out over the Bass Strait. A view from the Tidal Overlook Track. Photograph by Melissa Nichols. Courtesy of Parks Victoria. CC BY-NC 2.0.

When the British arrived, Gunnai language was damaged by the invasion, massacres, and killings. We were rounded up and put on missions. At Lake Tyers (a very important location in Gunnai Country) there was a mission – it was a concentration camp.

When they closed other missions, they sent people to Lake Tyers and so we ended up with a lot of different language speakers in one area. This had a lot of ramifications because differences and complexities between cultures were not respected by the missionaries. English was imposed and we were forced to stop doing our language, song, story and dance ceremonies.

I was fortunate to learn aspects of our language from my great-great-grandfather who was one of the fluent speakers at Lake Tyers. He instilled the spirit of language in me. And that’s why I grew up very interested in listening to how our people speak.

I listened to the way they spoke English words with our accent. I made mental notes. I would sit with Elders wherever I could to listen to them. And not just Elders, other age groups as well.

And then I did more research into Gunnai language. I read nineteenth century records written by Europeans who noted our speech patterns from the perspective of their own language. I studied linguistics. I realised a way to put all that together. And because our language was an oral tradition, and there were different dialects and different ways of pronouncing words, that’s why there are different variations of words. And there were different nationalities of people writing our language in their spelling systems. This is why we have different spelling of our language words. Even our name is spelt and pronounced in different ways – Gunnai, Kurnai, Ganai, Gaanay, Kurnay.

But whether ‘Gun’ or ‘Kurn’ or ‘Kan’ it means the same thing – ‘man’, or ‘initiated person or educated person’, educated in our cultural laws of lore.

The word for ‘man’ or ‘initiated person’ which starts with ‘Gun’ or ‘Kan’ is shared by other language groups in southern mainland Australia stretching right up the east coast and across to South Australia. We are all connected.

It is possible that the languages of mainland Australia and those of Lutruwita were related to each other a very long time ago, although no evidence of this survives in Lutruwita.

I believe it is plausible we once shared a language with Lutruwita because there are stories in our archives which reference flooding and movement of people. These stories tell us that our people originated from the south. The floodwaters have come, and people moved northwards.

Gunnai Country is in southernmost mainland Australia. Further south is the water, the islands, and Lutruwita/Tasmania.

I don’t believe the Out of Africa theory. Our stories say we came from the south. This tells me there was movement across the land bridge, and that we share Ancestry.

A hint of the flooding of the land bridge might be found in our tribal group names.

The Gunnai have five different tribes to help look after our Country.

The names of the five tribes indicate four directions plus fire. In the east is Krauratungaloong. In the west is Brayukaloong. In the south is Tatungaloong. In the north is Brabiraloong. And in the southwest we’ve got Bratauraloong. In the name Bratauraloong is the word ‘taura’, which means fire. Bratauraloong relates to where our fire was first obtained and restored to us in our dreaming stories.

Tatungaloong and Krauratungaloong land spans the coast from Ninety Mile Beach to Point Hicks. Both their names include the word ‘tunga’, which relates to ‘under’. For a long time, I wondered why tunga was in these names. ‘Under what?’ I wondered.

What if the word ‘under’ refers to land that is now underwater? If you look at Google Earth you can see the continental shelf, which is the edge of the land bridge under the water. The coast once stretched kilometres further to the edge of that continental shelf with the great rivers flowing far down to the ocean.

If it does mean ‘under water’ they must have renamed the tribes after the seawater rose. To indicate that the rest of the Country is under the water.

Gunnai Country as shown on Google Earth where the edges of the continental shelf can clearly be seen. This once made up land on the land bridge. Map by Wayne Thorpe. Source map by Google Earth. Map data: Google, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Data LDEO-Columbia, NSF, NOAALandsat / Copernicus.

The five tribes of the Gunnai, Bratauraloong, Brayukaloong, Tatungaloong, Brabiraloong and Krauratungaloong, overlaid on a Google Earth image. Map by Wayne Thorpe. Source map by Google Earth. Map data: Google, Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Data LDEO-Columbia, NSF, NOAALandsat / Copernicus.

Before the water flooded, there was just one land mass across to Lutruwita/Tasmania. I can see the extension of significant places like Yiruk and the Snowy River which flowed out to the continental shelf including the Boggy Creek as a river from Lake Tyers. The term tunga means that the land under the water is all Gunnai country. These places extending from the Great Dividing Range down across the land bridge.

There would have been travel and journey to come to ceremonies and to link up with the peoples of the northern and southern areas of Gunnai at different seasonal times for food reasons and ceremony reasons and trade.

And that is backed up with some of the language and some of the stories.

But then the middle part of our Country become flooded.

I can imagine that our Ancestors continued traveling back and forth over the land bridge after it was flooded, even though we couldn’t walk it anymore.

We are canoe people. We’ve made big canoes, small canoes, all different sizes. I can imagine that on a very calm day there would have been travel across from island to island, to get to the southern part of the Country that once was accessed by land.

So we have different suggestive remnants of the land bridge. Our significant places which extend to the sea. Our stories which indicate to me that we’ve come from the south. Our five different tribes which appear to have been renamed after the middle part got flooded.

All connecting us to the land bridge which is still there beneath the water.