Local youth learnt about significant Indigenous sites in the Gunnedah area recently.
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North West Local Land Services and Yawiriawiri Murri Ganuur Descendants Aboriginal Corporation partnered to take six Indigenous youth from the PCYC's Fit for Change program on a guided bus tour to help them reconnect with country.
Gunnedah PCYC's Senior Constable Trevor Roberts and the corporation's Joel Griffiths went along and the group visited Blackjack Creek, The Wallaby Trap, Namoi River, Boorabul Rock, Ydire Rock and the Boonalla Aboriginal area near Kelvin.
"A day like this is a good way to share the local Aboriginal knowledge of the area and a great way to connect kids back on country through learning about their culture and history of the Gunnedah area," Mr Griffiths said.
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At Blackjack Creek, the youth learnt about how the Aboriginal people used the rocks in the area to sharpen their various hunting tools and inspect axe grinding grooves.
The Curlewis common was a former Aboriginal camp and contains culturally modified trees. At Boonalla, they learnt the art of modifying the trees for cultural purposes.
At the Wallaby Trap, a traditional hunting ground in Gunnedah, the youth heard from Ion Idriess' book, The Red Chief, written from notes recorded by Stan Ewing as told to him by King Bungaree, the last full-blood Aboriginal of the Gunn-e-darr tribe.
The great Red Chief, known as Cumbo Gunn-e-rah (Red Kangaroo), was a member of the Gunn-e-darr tribe and is believed to have died around 1745.
According to a legend handed down through the tribe, the Red Chief saved his tribe from virtual destruction when members of the fierce Cassilis tribe came into their area.
The Red Chief devised a trap, which made use of the tribe's wallaby trap under the Bindea Ridges, where the hunters held a great hunt each year by herding wallabies into the inescapable curve of the Bindea or Porcupine Ridge.
With a mock camp set up in the curve and the women, children and elderly men hidden in the Secret Camp, the Gunn-e-darr warriors watched and waited as the Cassilis tribesmen took their bait and were trapped like the wallabies.
At Boorabul and Ydire rocks, the youth learnt about the ceremonies that took place there and the significance of the sites to the local clan groups.
"[It was] a great way for the kids to learn about their identity and story lines in the area and it's amazing how they can sit down and listen and want to take in all in to empower themselves," Senior Constable Roberts said.
The PCYC's Fit for Change program is two days a week and aims to re-engage Aboriginal youth in the education system and connect them to culture.
The Yawiriawiri Murri Ganuur Descendants Aboriginal Corporation was formed in 2017 by a group of traditional owners from the Gunnedah area who were descendants of Yawiriawiri Murri Gunuur.
Yawiriawiri Murri Ganuur was a tribal leader who was known as the king of the Burburgate people in the Gunnedah area throughout the 1800s.