Kûnai technology

Kûnai people used what Keith Hotchin calls a general east coast tool kit, but with particular adaptations to local materials, and to local resources, especially those of the lakes and rivers (Hotchin 1989). Grass-seed grinding was apparently absent in this region. Notable features of the technology included the use of boomerang and shield; a bark canoe made with the smooth side of the bark on the outside and used mainly on the lakes and estuaries; net types and techniques adapted to use in the lakes; skin clothing suited to the cold winters of the southeast; the many types of fighting club; the use of bone rather than shell for fish-hooks; and the type of fish spear.

Portability

Kûnai technology comes quite low on the portability scale, with its many specialised forms of club, spears, boomerangs and shields, and large nets.

Energy

The main sources of energy exploited were human muscular power, and fire; not wind or water power, except in carrying fish to nets and traps, and presumably exploitation of favourable currents, tides and winds in canoeing. However, muscular power was augmented especially by application of the lever principal, in spear-throwers. Energy from combustion, however, was used in many applications. Fire was important for preparing raw materials, for warmth in winter as well as cooking, for burning off and the management of food resources, maintaining an open structure of forest. Kûnai people used a fire drill consisting of grass-tree stem laid on the ground; a vertical stick was inserted in a notch in the horizontal piece and twirled between the palms (Howitt 1904:772).

Raw materials

Kûnai people used a technology of skin and sinew, wood and bark, and bone. They used a vast array of animal products, plant products and minerals to make artefacts. Beth Gott’s database (Gott 1991) on plant resources in Victoria contains a good deal of information about raw materials, including Gippsland. For example, acacia bark was used for containers, string, medicine and (outside Victoria) fish-poison. The active ingredient in medicinal use as well as fish poison was probably tannin.  Only larger species of tree yield pieces of bark large enough for containers, while the inner bark was used to make string

Manufacturing tools and techniques

Kûnai manufacturing tools and techniques are not well-recorded, but they included the use of old axe heads and stones as hammer-stones, and the ground-edge axe for cutting bark etc. Although not described ethnographically, stone burins were the likely tool for cutting and shaping bone, and are found in archaeological deposits. The process involved the cutting of longitudinal grooves along macropod long bone until splinters between the cuts could be separated (Hotchin 1989:193).

Transport

Kûnai designed their bark canoes for use on the shallow lakes, rivers and estuaries as well as coastal waters. These canoes had folded and tied ends, with ribs, gunwales and stretchers added, and a pole used as a paddle or punt-pole, as on the Darling River. A canoe could carry three people and a load of three bags of flour (Bulmer 1994:57). The extensive lake system must have provided a ready medium of communication, more or less continuous for 80 km., similar in its social as well as economic significance to the sheltered coastal waters of the Cape.

Containers

As containers Kûnai made net-bags (batûng) of sedge, jerat bags of animal skin used by men, bowls hollowed from tree-excrescences, and bark containers with tied ends (Smyth 1878:344-9; Howitt Papers MV B4 F7 xm527).

Shelter and clothing

As on the Darling-Barwon River, people wore decorated possum or kangaroo skin cloaks or rugs in this region, especially at higher altitudes, an adaptation to the cold winter climate. People also wore possum-fur waist-strings (kiang), necklaces, head bands and nose-bones for decoration. Types of shelter included stringy-bark lean-tos, bough wind-breaks, and huts thatched with grass and bark for the winter season (Bulmer 1994:58, in Curr 1887:544).

Production technologies

Tools and weapons
As well  as the hardwood digging stick, Kûnai had distinctive hunting weapons, including spears barbed with stone flakes stuck to the haft with grass-tree gum, bone-pronged fish-spears with two long tines, and bone or animal-claw fish-hooks for fishing (Bulmer 1994:58, Hotchin 1989:131, Smyth 1878:204, 391).

Facilities
Nets included both individual hand-nets, and long set-nets controlled by a small number of men. People of Lake Wellington used a brush fence for capturing waterfowl, and in the Metung area, a net for catching ducks and swans (Smyth 1878:389;  Museum Victoria object number x1536; Harrison 1924 cited in Wesson nd:24; Halstead 1977). Smyth (1878:204)  lists the technology used for different kinds of fish: the bone fish-hook for Schnapper, Perch, Trevalla, Sand mullet and Sea-trout; the net for Gurnet, Golden Perch and Silver Perch; the “grass-net” for Fat Mullet; the spear for Flounder, Garfish and Large Perch; spear and spearthrower (“hook”) for Flat-head.

Food processing
In the processing of food, Kûnai did not apparently make ovens, but cooked on the open fire (Bulmer 1994:57). They used reed knives for cutting meat as well as stone-flakes and stone flakes from spears (Bulmer Papers MV B10 F5 xm923:75; Smyth 1878). Use-wear studies suggest the use of shell as knives (Coutts 1967; Coutts et al n.d.). Stone flakes in the more recent deposits at Wilson’s Promontory excavated by Coutts consist of local flint and quartz, while material for axe heads may have come from Cape Liptrap or Mount William.

Storage
Hotchin (1989:139-41) infers from a number of reports that flesh was preserved through desiccation by cooking and smoking.

Medical  technologies

A range of Kûnai plant products and therapeutic measures has been recorded, as well as quasi-technologies or “magic”. They included bracken, Cranes Bill, ballarts (Exocarpos sp.), Black Wattle, Common Reed, Dune Thistle, mosses, Old Man Weed and many others (Bulmer 1994:23-4; Howitt 1904:376-9; Wesson n.d.).

Military technologies

Kûnai military technology is notable for the variety of clubs: pointed, sword-shaped, boomerang-shaped, and having heads of various shapes. These were in addition to spears with barbed wooden heads or barbed with stone flakes, and boomerangs. Male fighters carried a narrow shield in club fights and a broader one to parry spears. They also used clubs rather than spears for fighting in the camp, and women used their yam-sticks (Bulmer in Curr 1887:544, 549).

 
References

Bulmer, J. M., Victorian Aborigines: John Bulmer's Recollections 1855-1908, Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, 1994.

Coutts, P., 'The Archaeology of Wilson's Promontory' (MA diss., Australian National University, Canberra, 1967).

Coutts, P., V. Witter, R. Cochrane, and J. Patrick, Coastal Archaeology in Victoria, Victoria Archaeological Survey, n.d.

Curr, E. M. The Australian Race, John Ferres, Melbourne, vol. 4., 1887.

Gott, B., Victorian plants utilised by Koories: VICUSE database (MS 3039, Printout of VICUSE database held in Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archive (Research)), Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra, 1991.

Halstead, G., The Story of Metung and its First Inhabitants, Gay Halstead Publ., Sydney, 1977.

Hotchin, K. L., 'Environmental and Cultural Change in the Gippsland Lakes Region, Victoria, Australia' (PhD diss., Australian National University, 1990).

Howitt, A.W., The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, Macmillan, London, 1904 (Reprinted by Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, 1996).

Howitt, A.W., Papers, Museum Victoria, MV B4 F7, B5 F1, B6 F1, B6 F5, B10 F5; State Library of Victoria, B8 ms1053/3a, 3b, 4a.

Smyth, R. B., The Aborigines of Victoria: with Notes Relating to the Habits of the Natives of Other Parts of Australia and Tasmania, Compiled from Various Sources for the Government of Victoria, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1878, 2 vols.

Wesson, S., 'Yiruk plant use' (Report to Central Gippsland Aboriginal Health and Housing Co-operative), Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, MS 3557.

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