The Aboriginal Middens at Birubi

1 THE ABORIGINAL MIDDENS AT BIRUBI An account of surface collections (1964-1977) on the Aboriginal site at Birubi, near Port Stephens, New South Wales, and its subsequent excavation in 1978 and 1979. By L. K. Dyall Wallsend 2004 2 INDEX Chapter 1 Introduction 4 Chapter 2 Surface Collections of Stone Material 10 Chapter 3 Surface Collections of Faunal Remains 23 Chapter 4 The Excavation at Birubi 30 Chapter 5 Sorting and Identification of Excavated Material 36 Chapter 6 Stratigraphy, Dates, and Geomorphology 41 Chapter 7 Notes from the Period of European Contact 57 Chapter 8 Excavated Stone Material 70 Chapter 9 Implements of Bone and Shell 82 Chapter 10 Excavated Shellfish 92 Chapter 11 Analysis of Excavated Fish Bone 103 Chapter 12 Excavated Avian, Crustacean, Mammalian, and Reptilian Bone 122 Chapter 13 Archaeological Sites Associated with Birubi 128 Chapter 14 A Summary of the Birubi Project 142 Chapter 15 Some Notes on Midden Excavation 149 Attachment 1 The Diary of the Dig 152 List of Field Sketches 187 Field Sketches 1-30 188 Acknowledgements 222 Appendices 1-14 223 List of Appendices 247 Bibliography 248 Maps 1-4 (see listing on page 3) 256 3 Index continued Map 1 Location of the Birubi site in Australia Page 256 Map 2 Location of the Birubi site within the Port Stephens area 257 Map 3 Sketch map of the Birubi site 258 Map 4 The “Headland Midden” and “Islet Midden” at Birubi 259 4 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Preamble The Aboriginal occupation site at the locality of Birubi Point is close to the ocean beach. Map 1 shows the location of the Birubi midden on the east coast of Australia, and Map 2 shows its proximity to the sheltered waters of Port Stephens quite close to the north (only 6 km to Cromarty’s Bay, or 7 km to Salamander Bay). The Hunter River estuary at Newcastle is 32 km to the southwest along an open ocean beach. At Birubi, the long sweep of the beach and tall Outer Barrier sand dunes of the Newcastle Bight terminate at two headlands of porphyritic rock. Between these two headlands there is a small sandy beach, about 120 metres long, which is known locally as Little Beach. Birubi is officially part of the township of Anna Bay and in recent years the two settlements have become contiguous, but at the time of our fieldwork Birubi was regarded as a separate locality. Birubi is within the region traditionally owned by the Worimi people (Elkin 1932; Enright 1932). Today, the Worimi Land Council pursues an active program of recording Koori sites within their area, and I am indebted to the Land Council secretary, Lennie Anderson, for a stimulating and informative discussion about their work. The tribal way of life of the Worimi ceased within a decade or two of the settlement at Port Stephens by the Australian Agricultural Company in 1826, but we are fortunate to have accounts of their lifestyle observed by Dawson (1830) between 1826 and 1828 and by William Scott in the 1850’s (Bennett 1929). These and numerous other records from the time of European exploration and settlement have been gathered together by B. Sokoloff (1973) in a B. Litt. thesis. The early records are unusually rich (see Chapter 7). Site location Morna Point 1:25000 map (Second Edition), grid reference 136721. Site description I first visited this site in 1963, when the modern-day township was still small and had not yet encroached much upon the shell middens. Map 3 shows the details of the Birubi site as I sketched it in April 1977. At the time of my first visits, I estimated the shell middens to cover 4 to 5 hectares. Since 1977, more streets and parking areas, and a caravan park, have been constructed over the main area (D in Map 3) of the middens. The middens also continued to be steadily reduced by damage from gales. By the end of 1979, the main shell middens had all been scattered, and only the areas labelled AB and C remained. These last two areas were utterly destroyed by violent windstorms during 2002. In 1963, the most extensive shell heaps stretched across the top of low sand hills about 150 metres back from the high waterline of Little Beach. The shell layer, which was generally 10 to 30 cm thick, had long been subjected to the undercutting action of southerly storms, so that shell, flaked stone, and lumps of porphyry were strewn down the seaward face of the ridgeline. A continuous layer of undisturbed shell extended for about 150 metres parallel to the beach. Windblown sand covered the top of the shell layer, which possibly extended 30 metres back inland from the exposed face. The sand ridges terminated in low swampy ground. In some places, in front of the intact areas of shell, there were low conical sand heaps bearing a thin scatter of shell. These heaps represented collapses of the shell midden through wind action. These collapsed, or “deflated”, areas were remarked upon as long ago as 1928 by Hall (1928), and no doubt such damage by violent southerly storms has been occurring ever since the Aborigines first occupied the site. The deflated midden, on the area extending 5 towards the beach from the existing shell layers, was 20 to 40 metres wide, and occupied a gentle slope that terminated at the edge of a shallow swale immediately behind the low sand ridge at the back of the beach. In wet weather, this swale held fresh water. In Map 3, the part of this shell midden still intact in 1977 is labelled "Area D", the letter being chosen to coincide with the designation of the trench we subsequently dug there. Immediately to the southwest of this Area D, on the slopes of the narrow headland, scattered shell and flaked stone were exposed amongst the rocks. Most of this area (labelled F on Map 3) was covered with drift sand and lantana scrub in the 1960's, and the considerable extent of it was not revealed until the Port Stephens Shire Council cleared the area during the early 1970's to provide road access to a beachside parking area. Area G extended up the slopes of a massive sand dune immediately west of the narrow headland. This dune is part of the Outer Barrier system, which is a major geographical feature between Newcastle and Birubi. Although there is some loose sand on the seaward face of this dune, most of its face is made up of iron-cemented layers, and the presence of peaty layers and rotten tree-stumps indicates that there was a vegetative cover here at a not-too-distant date. These peaty layers formed sills, usually about 6 metres above the level of the freshwater ponds in the swale behind the beach dune. Flaked stone was commonplace in Area G, and in her 1928 paper Hall referred to "ovens" made up of rings of stones on this part of the site. This dune slope was for many years the terminus of the RAAF strafing and rocketing range and I have been told by Wing Commander Paul Johnson that pilots used the shell middens as targets. Following a serious accident to some boys who handled a live bomb, the lower slopes of this dune system were dug up and screened in 1972-73 to remove unexploded ammunition. The area behind Area D consisted of low sand dunes through which off-road vehicles gained access to the beach. This sandy track has now been paved and is called James Paterson Street. On this part of "Area F" there was merely a scatter of broken pipi shell, but stone artefacts - generally microlithic - were common. Further inland from Areas D and F there were swampy areas of black soil covered with tea-tree scrub. There is no permanent stream at Birubi but water supply would have been no problem since there were extensive swamplands within a few hundred metres of the shell middens. After wet weather, surface water was available in the swale between Little Beach and the main midden (D), and probably could be obtained by digging in all seasons. Deflated midden also extended east and southeast of Area D, up to the European cemetery, and this area (E on the map) carried a considerable scatter of burned cobbles as well as flaked stone. This midden was destroyed sometime prior to 1964, probably when Ocean Avenue was constructed to provide access to Little Beach. Further east, behind the rocky shore which forms part of Morna Point, shell could often be seen exposed on vacant house-lots and in gardens along Ocean Street. It was noticeable that these shells were species (such as tritons, turbans, and cartruts) typical of rocky shores whereas other middens mentioned here were made up predominantly of pipi shell. The appearance of recreational beach trikes at Birubi, in 1973, led to deep tracks being cut along the southern edge of the main headland. One such track exposed a small midden (designated AB) which differed from all the others in that it contained large quantities of fish bone amongst the shell. (In my 1977 report on Birubi to NPWS, I called this the “Headland Midden”). Another midden, on the tiny tide island close to AB (see Map 4), has similar faunal remains. Behind the AB-midden, the side of the headland was blanketed by a ridge of sand, which according to local residents (in 1978) had built up in the previous 30 years. Some of the sand moved in 1977 to reveal that the main headland at Birubi was capped with a pipi shell midden, some of it apparently intact.

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