Last chapter we saw Geoff Ford write his final word, St Ives Pistol Club shoot themselves in the foot, and so-called Guringai Tribal Link Aboriginal Corporation publish its first General Report is 17 years.
2021
Date: 15 Jan
Guringai Tours can come to your school and show artefacts and talk about how we use them, how we managed the bush. We can also do carvings in either sandstone or timber of the aboriginal totem of your area or your favourite bird or animal in front of the kids. We can also do boomerang throwing if you have a suitable area . Send us an email if your kindergarten, preschool or school would like me to come for a visit . Laurie . Cost from $450 – $600
‘Traditional‘
20/01/2021
Leaked email from Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 1:47 PM:
The email contains the following, from Tracey-Lee Howie:
“Hi Laurie,
I was going to call and talk to you about this but easier if I just type it out….Happy to discuss with you first if you want.
Could you please post for me on the Bungaree FB Page;
Dear Members,
Gladly we kick 2020 to the curb and move into an exciting New Year!! Let’s hope it’s a better one hey!
Thank you to my dear friend (my Sista) Kay Williams for sharing all the information and facts on the Bungaree FB page. With the immense pressures that our Board is constantly under (I refer to it as damage control) it is refreshing to know that we have your support as not only a dear friend but as a Historian of the Central Coast region. As you (Kay) are well aware, we are under constant and aggressive attacks by LALC’s and dear Mr. S, hiding out there in South Australia.
I STRONGLY RECOMMEND EVERYONE TAKE A LOOK AT THE FUTURE FOR CROWN LANDS. It’s alarming!!!!
The corruption of State Government, supported by LALC’s, who will receive all the crown land, is horrific to say the least.
As far as the comments I have been privileged to in regards to the information Kay has so graciously shared with us, I’m a little confused.
Kay is not attacking anyone, just stating facts and supplying the information to support those facts, should WE NEED IT IN THE FUTURE!!
Kay has done an enormous amount of research and is also a qualified Phycologist, that quite frankly, is my saviour on a regular basis.
I’m also convinced that those responding negatively to Kay have absolutely no idea of the stress and anxiety associated with our positions (Board), especially mine and the detriment that it has on our health and well being. Kay is there for me when I need support ALWAYS and if it wasn’t for Kay and others that support my mental health and keep me strong to continue fighting (because that’s what it is!!) for all of US, I would have resigned years ago, something I am contemplating again. ANY TAKERS FOR MY JOB??? I AM SERIOUS!
Once again Kay, Thank You for the hard work you have done and for having OUR best interests at heart. You are a true friend and Sista.
I hope everyone else has a great year and seriously…..if there’s anyone who would like to come and learn a position or take an active role within the Corp, STAND UP NOW PLEASE. Contact me!!! I am becoming increasingly busy with Wannangini Pty.Ltd. and Awabakal & Guringai Pty.Ltd. and am seriously considering closing GTLAC.
Take care All,
Ngah-nuu
Tracey”
17/02/2021
What is not to be lost in this apology is the clear demarcation Tracey makes between her so-called Ashby line, and other members of her organisation such as Bob Waterer, Neil Evers, and Laurie Bimson.
Non-Aboriginal man Laurie Bimson opens the next meeting with a Welcome to Country, before representing actual Aboriginal People on the committee.
Again no conflict of interest is declared, despite Mr Laurie Bimson being a named party to the failed Native Title gamble only a few years earlier, aided by archaeologist Dr Michael Bennet.
Here we find that Laurie Bimson claims to be putting Michael Bennet in touch with his “family who lived on the Hawkesbury River.” I know these supposed family members of Laurie Bimson’s were not any member of the confirmed Aboriginal Families that know Dyrubin as Country. I also know that during this time Bradley Twynham began to become involved in the GuriNgai scam.
Opportunities are sought, while critique and oversight discouraged, with excuse filled narratives already being put to use, before inconsistencies have even been identified by Dr Jones-Travers.
Again we see what would in most situation be a good thing, the acknowledgement that the Aboriginal Community needs to be heard. Yet the voices being amplified belong to non-Aboriginal People, claiming Culture, Country, and Ancestors that have never, ever been theirs to claim.
Before further propaganda that would North Korea would think is ‘a bit much’ is being promoted as ‘Culture.’ Can’t you just feel that Gap closing.
Non-Aboriginal Tracey Howie is again referred to inauthentically as ‘Auntie.’
We see administrators seeking Cultural advice, again being referred to the non-Aboriginal Guringai.
On 13 March members of Guringai Tribal Link created a change.org petition titled
Stop The Dispossession Of The Blood Line Custodians From Their Traditional Country
This time referring to themselves as blood line custodians of the Wannangini (Guringai & Awabakal) peoples, they sought to pressure the state government into changing signage to reflect their debunked pseudo-Aboriginality.
Despite over twenty years of efforts they managed to obtain only 206 signatures.
Signatories include the following:
Thankfully only 206 people were fooled into signing this artifact of irony twisting in on itself completely.
29/03/2021
On 29 March the local Aboriginal Land Council of the Central Coast were forced to respond to internet trolling by members and associates of Guringai Tribal Link.
A second media release the same day (RE: Aboriginal Cultural Authority on the Central Coast of New South Wales) came bundled with a few of the previous efforts by a variety of Aboriginal people to be heard over on this issue.
Coast Environmental Alliance (CEA) spreads further misinformation on behalf of Tracey-Lee Howie.
According to GuriNgai Elder, Aunty Tracey-Lee Howie, “some of the main Aboriginal clans in the Central Coast region are the Garigal, the Wannangini, the Walkaloa and the Wannabe.
Obviously this led me down quite a rabbithole.
Tracey Howie again, playing a part.
Finally we see confirmation that someone has made Tracey Howie aware of what ‘conflict of interest’ means. While Howie admits to her involvement in the Westleigh Project, she manages to still be untruthful in relation to how many of her many corporate entities had already attached themselves to that particular vein.
Hornsby Council is fully aware that these people are not Traditional Owners, but repeatedly repeats this falsehood, adding to the illusory truth effect created by the GuriNgai over these past 2 decades.
On May 19, The Australian, newspaper featured an article by Stephen Rice titled
Bloodlines row over native title claim. The article alleges what is demonstrably true, that many of the ‘Senior’ people involved in Guringai Tribal Link did not even know they had possible Aboriginal heritage until one discovered a wallet containing old birth certificates at the back of a wardrobe in 2004.
Mr Rice notes that the previously mentioned Native Title attempt by Guringai Tribal Link failed because the group could not prove they had followed traditional laws and customs since Colonisation.
Laurie Bimson was interviewed for the article and is quoted as saying of the genuine Aboriginal people harmed by the conduct of Mr Bimson and his compatriots:
“They don’t have the same love of our country as we do. They look at our land as a money making exercise. They want to do a land claim and sell it off and make money.”
At the time the article was published Mr Bimson had spent over a decade operating $65-a-head tours of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and hiring out his services doing smoking ceremonies and welcomes to country. That same year Laurie was advertising that Guringai Tours can come to your school and show artefacts and talk about how we use them, how we managed the bush. We can also do carvings in either sandstone or timber of the aboriginal totem of your area or your favourite bird or animal in front of the kids. We can also do boomerang throwing if you have a suitable area . Send us an email if your kindergarten, preschool or school would like me to come for a visit . Laurie . Cost from $450 – $600
Laurie Bimson is featured proclaiming himself a Guringai man, without specifying if he means to apply the designation as to refer to a Clan, a Language, or a fictional nation. To his credit Laurie did admit only discovered his Aboriginal Ancestor because a cousin, Bob Waterer, “gave me a lot of information on everything”.
In response to the claims made by the ‘Senior People’ of Guringai Tribal Link, CEO of Metroploitan Land Counil again Nathan Moran said “I would not say that someone who, on their own history says they discovered an Aboriginal ancestor 15 years ago and wrote a book on it, could somehow claim to be Aboriginal.
“They are newly identified Aboriginal people, but what we’re talking about is continuation of identity as an Aboriginal person that they have acknowledged did not continue and have only recommenced in the last decade – after fifteen decades of absence,” he said.
“Native title is about authenticating continuing cultural knowledge and practices but they had no continuing cultural practices, knowledge, or even dare we say kinship systems that allowed them to know who they were up until Bob Waterer wrote his book.”
Mr Bimson acknowledged he only discovered his links to Bungaree through Bob Waterer but said: “Yeah, what about it? So?”
Mr Bimson said his group had not given up on its native title ambitions over territory extending from northern Sydney up to Newcastle. They saw an opportunity when the St Ives Pistol Club in Belrose sought to extend its shooting range into adjoining Crown land but believed it needed to negotiate with “the Awabakal and Guringai People” as the traditional owners. The club agreed to a deal with representatives of the group, for an undisclosed benefit.
However, seven Local Aboriginal Land Councils from the Sydney/Newcastle region – all statutory bodies – objected to the agreement, telling the National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT) that they do not recognise the group as being of Aboriginal descent.
“Nor are they active members of our Aboriginal communities in the Sydney/Newcastle Region,” the land councils said in a letter to NNTT president John Dowsett in June last year. “Any claim that the Guringai or Awabakal people are from the Northern Sydney or Central Coast is false and should be rejected.”
The Registrar of the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act, Nicole Courtman, also wrote to the NNTT raising a number of concerns over the proposed St Ives Pistol Club agreement.
Within a week The Australian, newspaper featured an follow-up article by Stephen Rice titled Bloodline doubt sees Guringai references wiped out. The article states that NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has been aware for some time that claims by amateur anthropologist John Fraser in 1892 that northern Sydney had been inhabited by the “Guringai”, or “Ku-ring-gai” were incorrect.
It seems that NPWS requested more than a year ago, so around the year 2020) that Laurie Bimson, stop advertising on his Guringai Aboriginal Tours website that his people “have been custodians of Guringai country for about 40,000 years.”
This request like so many others made to Guringai Tribal Link members to stop, appears to have fallen on deaf ears.
Although it appears sometimes the Director of the Guringai Tribal Link organisation somehow forgets his narrative, claiming to be a Darug Custodian; another falsehood with no regard to his members, the wider community both White and Black, or any semblance of honesty.
‘Uncle’ Laurie Bimson. This guy:
Laurie celebrates having another of his bogus enterprises featured in a newspaper.
Jim Wafer’s report? This report:
Laurie Bimson make a plea to have precious funds wasted on the appalling language books the GuriNgai already received funding for to produce.
The Indigenous Party of Australia, currently in the process of becoming a registered political party, has joined the groundswell of opposition to a development project planned for sensitive land at Kariong.
The Darkinjung Local Aboriginal Land Council (DLALC) proposal for a 70-home housing development in Woy Woy Rd is currently under consideration by the NSW Planning Department, with a campaign spearheaded by Coast Environmental Alliance and some members of the Central Coast’s Indigenous community saying the plans would encroach on culturally significant land.
DLALC has questioned the cultural authority and status of some Aboriginal groups in the community, with much of the controversy centred around the use of the term Guringai in defining Indigenous residents on the Coast.
“(Local government) on the Northern Beaches faced a similar dilemma and provided a report clarifying the status of the Guringai,” a statement from DLALC said.
“In short the report found that the Guringai in Sydney and the Central Coast were a fiction and discredited the problematic anthropologist (who coined the name).
“Furthermore the ‘Guringai’ made an application for Native Title on lands including on the Central Coast and had to discontinue their application.”
Charlie Coe also explored the impact of Guringai Tribal Link Leadership in the following article for the Daily Mail:
Pseudo-Aboriginal ‘Uncle’ Neil Evers talk on Sorry Day.
In June of 2021, Dr James ‘Jim’ Wafer from the University of Newcastle produced a report for the Guringai Tribal Link Aboriginal Corporation. Jim is an anthropologist whose expertise is listed as ‘Australian Indigenous languages, with a focus on those of NSW in general and of the Hunter River-Lake Macquarie region in particular.’
Page 17 of the report reads:
Guringai Tribal Link Aboriginal Corporation was established in 2003 to represent Aboriginal people whose ancestors came from the Central Coast region, and a number of its members are descendants of Bungaree.
While Jim is correct about the founding date of Guringai Tribal Link Aboriginal Corporation, he is incorrect regarding their motivation.
We know from Guringai Tribal Link’s Consolidated Rule Book that the organisation’s objectives, which remains unchanged to this day are as follows:
You’ll notice no mention of the Central Coast, and instead a very narrow focus on only the membership of Guringai Tribal Link. Either Jim Wafer missed this, or he didn’t have the means to check what he was told by GuriNgai, rather than what they actually do.
Unfortunately Jim Wafer avoids the can of worms over which GuriNgai members are actually descendants of Bungaree, rather than which members falsly claim descent.
As we now know, GurinGai Tribal Link members who are descended from what they refer to as the ‘Ashby line’ are not in anyway related to Bungaree, Matora, or any members of my Aboriginal family. These people include Warren Whitfield, Tracey-Lee Howie, Paul Craig, and many more involved in the GuriNgai enterprise.
Clearly, it is their prerogative to decide on the name they use for their
organisation, and for the language that their ancestors (sic) spoke.
While I agree it is Guringai Tribal Link Directors “prerogative to decide on the name they use for their organisation,” it is most certainly not their prerogative to decide the name for the language their ancestors (sic) spoke, and is deeply concerning that a researcher in Languages would ever make this incredibly irresponsible claim.
Nonetheless, there has recently been some scurrilous public criticism of this usage, particularly by Mr Robert Syron, who appears to believe that the Guringai have fraudulently adopted the name of his own dialect group, which is usually spelt as “Gringai”.
Jim is correct there has been public criticism of Guringai Tribal Link, but incorrect in his use of the word ‘scurrilous.’ Jim fails to mention that many, many genuine Aboriginal People have raised concerns over the actions of the leadership of Guringai Tribal Link for a long time. Jim does not mention the numerous newspaper articles written, critical of the GuriNgai and their false claims. Jim must have been aware of at least some of the information now fully detailed on bungaree.org, yet rather than address this, Jim instead choses to focus on one critic of the GuriNgai, Mr Robert Syron.
Mr Robert Syron is a well respected Guringay/Gringai Biripai Worimai man, and a Rwandan War veteran.
There is no discernible logic in Mr Syron’s argument. The two groups are clearly associated with quite distinct locations (Gringai being situated north of the Hunter) and are recognised as speaking distinct dialects.
It is bewildering that Jim can’t follow the logic of Mr Syron’s reasoning, when to my eyes Mr Syron’s wording from this Koori Mail article dated December 2019 is crystal clear:
“Look, I say ‘high five’ to those people who discover later in life that they are connected to Aboriginal people, but when you discover that you’re an Aboriginal person you need to then follow cultural protocol and actually connect to your local Aboriginal communities. What I’m hearing a lot from Aboriginal people right across Australia is we have these people coming in, with a relatively recent discovery of Aboriginal ancestry, and before they get involved with their community at all, they go off and make what can often turn out to be highly unsubstantiated claims.”
Syron said that instead of approaching the community they are claiming to be part of, with real and genuine concern and proper consultation, some people claiming to be of Aboriginal descent are starting all kinds of businesses, off the back of their newfound identity, all for the benefit of lining their own pocket.
“And it’s disgusting. It’s culturally wrong and it’s historically wrong when this type of thing happens in our communities,” he said. As a registered Aboriginal owner of Guringay/Gringai and Worimi lands, Syron said it is highly disrespectful to take another mob’s language, group, or tribal name, and use it as your own. “And I’d go as far as to say that these people are bastardising our Guringay/Gringai language and culture. I have no choice other than to honour all of my old people who have gone before me, and I will spend the rest of my life fighting for the acknowledgement of what it truly means to be Guringay/Gringai. “This is about changing history. And I’m talking about a grossly inaccurate and misleading interpretation of the many different language groups of Aboriginal people from around Australia, mainly recorded erroneously over the last 200 odd years.”
These same people that are comfortable appropriating the name of Mr Syron’s clan, are the very same that stole my Ancestors and regularly claim decent from them despite being proven to have zero biological or Cultural connection to them, or the areas they reside.
Jim doesn’t understand this, and instead of making any effort to (you know, like a researcher) he brushes of Mr Syron’s very legitimate concerns.
In short, Mr Syron’s attack on the use of the term “Guringai” by the people who call themselves by that name appears to be an exercise in intimidation and bullying, without any plausible foundation.
Not understanding an Aboriginal Man standing up for his Clan is part and parcel with being non-Aboriginal. Labelling the publication of an article in a respected Aboriginal News outlet as the Koori Mail as intimidation and bullying without any plausible foundation demonstrates a racialized ignorance of Aboriginal People and Culture that is frankly embarrassing, and more than a little racist, in my humble opinion. Not understanding the people you are working with and advocating for is pretty silly.
Page 18 provided us with conclusion, under the subtitle of “truth-telling.”
16. Conclusion: “truth‐telling” The foregoing account of the language history of the Central Coast is, to a large
extent, such a sorry saga of misunderstandings, blunders and confusion, that I
have seriously questioned my own ability to get it straight – or, simply put, to tell the truth.
This startling admission in the opening lines of his conclusion does a lot in demonstrating the confidence of a researcher relying on less than solid evidence, at the beck and call of an impatient patron who demands proof where none can exist.
Oddly Jim doesn’t notice that the source of a great deal of this confusion are the very people for whom he wrote this report.
What has kept me going is the advice of a friend who said “Leave it to Country”.
Because, in the end, it will be Country that decides.
The ancestors know which language they spoke, and they still exercise their power through language, however long it has been asleep,
in the world of the 21st century.
Its possible Jim’s friend was advising him to leave the matter alone, or advising to leave the matter with Aboriginal People. Aboriginal Culture and history is not democratic, and we don’t play games of picking and choosing what suits us at a given time.
Country does not ‘decide’, Country knows, and we know as Aboriginal People. We’re as fallible as any other human, but we don’t pick and chose our Clan names, or Language like an American tourist at a buffet.
I have undertaken the writing of this report at the request of the Guringai Tribal Link Aboriginal Corporation, in the hope that it will enable the voices of the ancestors to be heard once again on the land now known as the Central Coast of NSW.
The voices of Ancestors are heard by their descendants, and no Aboriginal Person needs your help with that thank Jim Wafer.
My concern here is only with language.
My concern is only with a group of non-Aboriginal frauds passing themselves off as Aboriginal People, with the assistance of a handful of academics who really should know better. Assuming there is a “takeover’ of the Central Coast, dubbing the efforts of an Aboriginal Organisation ‘propaganda’, while uncritically accepting the claims of the GuriNgai seems to stretch a little further than concerns over language.
I have made no attempt to untangle the complex web of family relationships that has led people to identify with one language name or another.
That would be a different exercise requiring a depth of local knowledge that I make no claim to having.
Without this knowledge, Jim Wafer accepts Guringai Tribal Link at face value, and subsequently becomes simply the latest non-Aboriginal academic to be drawn in by the discovery of these unusual people. I too am fascinated with the GuriNgai, but for very different reasons.
Nor am I in a position to undertake the necessary research, which has, in any case, already been carried out for the Awabakal and Guringai People’s native title claim.
Assuming adequate research has been carried out for a Native Title Claim that was withdrawn under unusual circumstances is an error that Jim Wafer appears committed to.
The relevant documentation, which I understand was written by anthropologist Natalie Kwok, is not public, and I have not seen it.
Why? Why would Jim Wafer, having been employed by Guringai Tribal Link Aboriginal Corporation, not have access to this documentation? Surely having more information is preferable, and surely the GuriNgai would also want to share this information, so why did this not take place?
In the matter of language, however, I take all responsibility for any errors of fact
or interpretation.
Unfortunately, you can’t pick and choose what aspects of your own research you take responsibility for.
Jim Wafer, as the author of the work is responsible for ALL errors of fact or interpretation, whether they relate to language or not.
Sadly Jim has followed in the footsteps of the small handful of gullible non-Aboriginal People to be taken for a ride by this lot, and contributed nothing more to academic discourse than a cautionary tale for academics to beware of race-shifters, pretendians, and frauds.
Dr Wafer, if you ever find the time to read this I hope you can learn to take responsibility for your contributions to the ongoing farce that is the so-called Guringai Tribal Link Aboriginal Corporation.
18/08/2021
21/08/2021
Howie, a direct descendant of Bungaree, who circumnavigated Australia with Matthew Flinders in the first years of the 19th century, is well known on the Coast for her strong advocacy of Indigenous rights.
Well known on the Coast for her strong advocacy of Indigenous rights?
A thesis by one Laurence Paul Allen is submitted to the University of Newcastle in NSW, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Modern History. Titled A History of the Aboriginal People of the Central Coast of New South Wales to 1874, this academic work deftly acknowledges the “GuriNgai issue from an a politely objective perspective.
Mr Allen gives an account for of the initial confusion over the name Kuring-gai:
There has been much controversy on the Central Coast over the correct name for the Aboriginal people of the area, and for their country and language. One popular contender for all three has been ‘Kuring-gai’, first attested in an undated Aboriginal word list compiled by the surveyor and ethnographer John Frederick Mann (as ‘Kuringa, Gai’). 13 Although Mann did not specify where ‘Kuringa, Gai’ was, he himself was closely associated with the Central Coast. Then in 1892 linguist and ethnographer Rev. John Fraser published missionary Lancelot Threlkeld’s work on the Lake Macquarie language and included a reference to the ‘Kurringai tribe’ whose hunting grounds, he claimed, stretched from the Macleay River south to the Hawkesbury.14 He also wrote that Kuringai was an established name at that time whose basic meaning was ‘men’ – perhaps drawing on Mann’s reference from several decades earlier. Here matters rested for many years until a map drawn by Norman Tindale in 1940 showing ‘the distribution of the Aboriginal tribes of Australia’ designated the people living between Gosford and Wyong as the ‘Darkinung’ or ‘Darkinjang’, and this has been perpetuated in the widely known coloured version of this map first published in 1974.15
Mr Allen even specifies the work that convinced Mr Whitfield to tattoo his arm.
However in 1970 linguist Arthur Capell considered that ‘a language which it is convenient to call Kuringgai (Guringgai) was spoken on the north side of Port Jackson, and extended at least to Tuggerah Lakes, merging then into Awaba [i.e. the language recorded by Missionary Threlkeld at Lake Macquarie]’. Capell claimed that a different language, which he called Darginyung, was spoken in the Upper McDonald Valley, Wollombi and the western part of the Central Coast. 16
Mr Allen pre-emptively sidesteps a common complaint from GuriNgai devotees, one experienced by this author on this week.
It is important to note that Capell was simply seeking to find an appropriate name for a language and was not asserting that this was the name by which Aboriginal people identified themselves.
Mr Allen goes on to identify that the uncertainty linked to these discrepancies came to a head when the local Land Council was given the name Darkinjung, raising the ire of those Central Coast people identifying as ‘Guringai’, or another alternative, ‘Wanangine’. 17
And what is the source given by Mr Allen? Holy smokes its only ‘Guringai Aboriginal Tribal Link: About Us,’ accessed 21 Feb. 2017, http://www.guringai.com.au!
I can very much relate to what Mr Allen describes as “(t)he confusion continued in 2010 when veterinarian Geoffrey Ford’s M.A. thesis ‘Darkiñung Recognition’ asserted that the coastal plain forming the eastern strip of the Central Coast was home to the ‘Wannungine’.
In 2013 Ford added that the language was almost certainly called Darkiñung, while in 2015 the Aboriginal Heritage Office published an exhaustive study of the name ‘Guringai’, which concluded that ‘the use of the term Guringai or any of its various spellings such as Kuringgai is not warranted [anywhere] given its origin and previous use’.
Mr Allen identifies the blanket list from which the name ‘Walkeloa’ was appropriated:
In addition, the 1837 census or ‘Native Return’ compiled by missionary Lancelot Threlkeld lists the Aboriginal people of Brisbane Water as the ‘Walkeloa’ but this name does not seem to have received support in the twenty-first century.
Clearly, this ongoing debate is relevant when writing about the Central Coast if Aboriginal people are to be named without causing unnecessary offence. Although various options have been considered, the name used in this thesis to identify the Aboriginal people of the Central Coast is ‘Darkinjung’, in conformity with the name and spelling adopted by the local Land Council. The terms ‘coastal Darkinjung’ or ‘Central Coast Darkinjung’ are occasionally used to distinguish them from the ‘inland Darkinjung’, that is, the people living around Wollombi and the MacDonald River. This should not be considered as a claim that Aboriginal people on the Central Coast referred to themselves by these names in the nineteenth century, as no documentary evidence has been found for such an assertion. Historian Michael Powell and private researcher Rex Hesline have pointed out that almost all current names for Aboriginal languages and clan groupings are late constructs, and there is little evidence that they were known to Indigenous people in 1788.
It is the present writer’s view that the names of the small family clans on the Central Coast (since lost) would have been the only collective names used, and in all probability, there would have been no name in their language for the people as a whole, the Central Coast region or, in fact, the language itself.
On page 14 we see how the GuriNgai were able to have their stories referred to in an academic paper; I am sorry for your loss Mr Allen.
Mr Allen correctly identifies the sources of claimed connection between a Sophy of the Central Coast area and Bungaree. Yet another biography has appeared recently, entitled Bungaree’s Mob, published by a local history group at Pearl Beach as part of a wider education campaign. 72 A biography of Sophy, Bungaree’s daughter, and Charlotte Ashby, his granddaughter, has appeared on several websites and has been attributed to Warren Whitfield, a descendant. 73
You should be able to trust people hey.
Whitfield’s fictional narrative that Charlotte Webb is somehow the grand-daughter of Bungaree appears again:
Less is known about the way Darkinjung people interacted with other Brisbane Water settlers. James Webb, the earliest settler, whose property was spread between present day Orange Grove and Woy Woy, 55 is believed to have had sexual relations with Sophy/Booratora, reputed to be the daughter of Bungaree and his wife Matora, and this liaison resulted in the birth of a child, Charlotte, in about 1824.56
Page 188 gifts us with the following:
Webb does not appear to have lived long with Sophy/Booratora, since their daughter Charlotte was brought up by Sophy and a de facto stepfather, John Smith.64
Page 312 provides us documentary evidence in the form of a photograph of Charlotte Ashby, sourced from none other than Mr Warren Whitfield.
This photograph of Charlotte Ashby is at the time of writing still displayed on the website of one of Mr Whitfield’s relatives.
It’s only when you scroll down to the comments that you find yet another family member of Warren Whitfield attempting to correct the record.
To which Warren Whitfield admits his mistake, before proceeding to do nothing about correcting it, for as of now just over 12 years.
The photo mislabelled by Warren Whitfield as being of Charlotte Ashby, a mistake Warren Whitfield was made aware of, publicly acknowledged, then left to sit there misleading others, has now made it into the Academy.
Warren has demonstrated in the comment section of website Bungaree.org an unusual preoccupation with academia. To now have his ‘work’ cited in an academic work has real significance to him, regardless of context/legitimacy/accuracy of his output.
I’m confident the GuriNgai would have been thrilled to also see this fiction slip past the keeper:
Vampires have less hunger for blood than some Ashby descendants for Bungaree’s: its an obsession born out of want/reality; they just can’t prove what isn’t there to prove, that Sophy was never a daughter of Bungaree.
I do not know, nor have I met Laurence Paul Allen, but I applaud his thesis, and the fine line he had to walk around some of the people and subsequent misinformation surrounding claims for the Central Coast and beyond.
My only hope is that future acknowledgments of Warren Whitfield’s work appear in Criminology textbooks, or are at least more recognisable as the carnival oddity that they are.
The article claims ‘former candidate, Tracey Howie, who has withdrawn from the race due to her expanding responsibilities as an Indigenous archaeologist, will be replaced by Jeff Lawson.’
https://www.instagram.com/p/CXuehyLMwgA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Truth-telling from a neurodiverse perspective. 
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