We encountered other sacred places for the Ngemba people at Byrock and Gundabooka. This is dry, stone country. It might look rather desolate but look closer and there are some fascinating stories dating back millennia .... you just need to scratch the surface a little!
Byrock is home to some important natural rockholes carved out of a large granite outcrop. These were important sources of water for the area particularly at times when the Mulga and Yanda Creeks weren’t running. The Ngemba mythology is quite fascinating - see my Blog post October 2017 for more - hwheat8.blogspot.com and search for Byrock. You won’t be surprised to learn that what interested me were the plants and the diet of these stone country people. We think the country looks empty and inhospitable, but they had fruit such as quandongs, wild bananas, mistletoe, currant bush, wild plums, ‘Mulga apples’ (sweet edible galls produced by a small wasp larva) and bush oranges. They ate wild spinach, yams and reeds, and seeds from native grasses, kurrajong, wilga and mulga trees.For example the ErEmophila longifolia (also known as Emu Bush because the emus love to eat the fruit) was a bountiful plant. The flowers were eaten and the leaves boiled in water to treat skin problems and the boiled water was also used to treat stomach ulcers. Nothing was wasted! And here there was a good source of meat - kangaroo and wallabies, pigeons and bush turkey, snakes and tree goanna, and crayfish. Very rich! It was a delightful place to explore and we would have spent more time there had it been cooler. We escaped to investigate the Gundabooka National Park, part of the lands of the Ngemba people.
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| Byrock Rock pools |
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| The flowers, buds and unripe fruit of an Eremophila. |
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| Ripe juicy Eremophila fruit |
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| Kurrajong seeds were ground and baked |
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