Sugarbag country

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"He showed the ancestors how to get bush food and gave them sugarbag from the bush bee."

A preliminary study of culturally modified sugarbag trees in the Laura Sandstone Basin, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland

Sugarbag trees, usually Cooktown ironwood trees, are a common feature of Cape York’s open woodlands (Morrison et al. 2012; Trezise 1973:154). In this region they often occur close to waterways, such as the Morehead River where the sugarbag tree was identified as the most commonly occurring cultural site (Rigsby and Cole 2007).

Abstract 

Erythrophleum spp. (Cooktown ironwood) is an endemic north Australian tree that is a key cultural resource. In Cape York Peninsula (CYP), Traditional Owners value, use, care for and manage the trees in culturally appropriate ways. Members of the Agayrr Bamangay Milbi (ABM) Project team have recorded hundreds of culturally modified Cooktown ironwood trees (CMTs) across southeast CYP, stretching from Jowalbinna in the south to Cape Melville in the north. In this paper we specifically discuss CMTs with evidence of sugarbag extraction. These trees provide a chronological sequence of technology (from stone to steel axes) and an important, if vulnerable, material record of natural resource procurement, cultural knowledge and connections to Country. We show how the significance of sugarbag trees is reflected not only in their ubiquity but also in the iconography of rock art, other cultural associations and archaeological values. A dearth of metal-cut sugarbag scars – in stark contrast to elsewhere in CYP and despite an abundance of such axes circulating amongst Aboriginal groups in the region – is posited to be related to the especially violent local contact history associated with mining. We discuss trends in distribution that invite more detailed studies of the environmental distribution of the Cooktown ironwood and of the contemporary distribution of native bees, noting that non-cultural burning and land-clearing practices represent ongoing threats to CMT survival in the region. 

Rock Art on Quinkan Country 

Quinkan Country is located near the small town of Laura in the south-east region of Cape York Peninsula in North Queensland. Beyond Quinkan Country lies the Ringurru (Lakefield) National Park to the north, the Great Dividing Range to the south and the Koolburra Plateau to the west.

Language 

Guku, Arnhem land

Kuuku Purrungunuma (Hollow Log language)

Kuku, Agu Aloja (Sugarbag Bee language)

The cultural significance of sugarbag is reflected in the name ‘Agu Aloja’, ‘Sugarbag Bee Language’, a clan dialect of Kuku Thaypan language (Rigsby 2003). 

The term sugarbag is an english term originating from the practice of ringing wild bush honey, beeswax, bees and other hive products through a cloth or bag. This method of harvesting wild honey can be used for both honey bees and stingless bees that nest in tree hollows.

Rock Art

Prominence of sugarbag motifs in Laura rock art (e.g. Trezise 1993).