First Nations Language Collection

Grosvenor Street, Toowong S.W.1. June, 19th, 1940.

Mr. Sydney May, Hon. Secretary, Place names Committee, University of Queensland.

Dear Sir,

With reference to two place names which you submitted to me, I have to advice you as follows.

Coombabah. Said to be a pocket of land impinging on a swamp. This is not the literal meaning although a certain place may be so-called. The meaning of the name is "Place of wood grubs, from goombo, the teredo or, as it is frequently termed by whites, cobra. The place in question was probably so-named because the blacks had a practice of collecting the grubs from decayed timber in the swamps and thereafter putting into the water more fresh timber, chiefly oak, to accommodate grubs for future use.

Boobyjan. At the time of writing to you, I did not know know that there was a place of this name to the south of Brisbane, but had in mind a cattle station of that name in the Burnett district, but knowing of no such word in the local tongue, I could not give any definite information there on. Mr E. Armitage of Maryborough has interpreted the name as "where the blacks stood". I think, however, the translation has been arrived at the deduction and not by local knowledge. It seems to be interpreted from bubai, to stand, and tyan, black men.

To show the falacy of such deductions, I may say that, in the language of the blacks at the Albert River, bo-be means ashes or fine dust, and in the locality, no doubt, the name means place of ashes.

Sice[sic] my last letter to you, I have found that Messrs Lawless brothers, in the forties of last century, left Ninduin-ba Station in the Albert River District and took up land in the Burnett District which they named Boobyjan, probably using a term that they had learned at the Albert River. Ninduinba means "place of charcoal or embers".

By a flight of fancy one could imagine that, when naming the Burnett property, Lawless Brothers had in mind the mythological Phoenix rising from the bu-be (ashes) of the ninduin (charcoal or Embers).

Yours faithfully. FJWatson (F.J.Watson).