Gandangara Language of the Blue Mountains Preserved by Historian Jim Barrett

JIM Barrett said it made him so sad when two Aboriginal women he’d met from a Blue Mountains tribe told him they knew only one word each of their grandmothers’ language.

“One of the words was ‘daabuu’. It means ‘strong’ as in tea,” Mr Barrett said.

Their story spurred him to write a book filled with the lost words. It took 15 years.

The 93-year-old historian hopes the book, Gandanguurra: The Language of the Mountain People — and Beyond, will be used as a learning tool in schools in the region. “That’s my ideal.”

He said, “I’m glad I did this because the only recorded examples (of the Gandangara peoples’ language) were by a surveyor, Robert Mathews (1841-1918) and Mary Everett.

“I now know exactly what the languages’ stresses are (and) would be understood if I had to speak it.

“It’s a bit like Latin. They work on diagraphs … two letters making a sound. There are 11 diagraphs.”

He said he has discovered no ‘j’ in the language, but there is a ‘dg’, and there are only three vowels: a, i and u.

Steve Alton (NPWS), then Blue Mountains mayor Jim Angel and MP Bob Debus, with Bill Hardy from the Gundungurra Tribal Council, former Blue Mountains councillors Herman Kozelj and Terri Hamilton and tribal elders Joan Cooper and Dawn Colless at Echo Point, Katoomba.

“Each vowel has a short sound and a long sound,” he said. “Short ‘i’ is like ‘pin’; long ‘i’ is like ‘ee’ in ‘meet’.”

In 1795, when British naval surgeon George Bass and English navigator Matthew Flinders first explored the Georges River — before the colonisation of the Liverpool area — the Darug, Tharawal and Gandangara tribes lived in the area, according to the KARI Aboriginal Resources website.

Gandangara is said to be the language of the mountain people, from the Blue Mountains to the Nattai and Burragorang Valleys and as far south as Goulburn, the website states.

Jim Barrett, 93, says he is considered a ‘White Elder’ in the Blue Mountains by virtue of his age. Picture: Matthew Sullivan

Sound recording

Historical records show ethnographer Bennett recording a sentence in Gandangara in 1901, meaning “I’m going to get off”.

Source: J. Smith, ‘Gundungurra Country’, PhD thesis, 2008