Gali-birraa = WWWs (whitewood water wells)
I’ve been watching the whitewoods a lot lately and checking to see if any are holding water. You can’t speculate about how trees were used pre-colonial times until you have either Indig. cultural memory or you can establish a pattern. It was the same with the TinTs but this time WWWs have the added difficulty of only showing themselves after rain in the cooler months. I have found 2 whitewood (birraa – Atalaya hemiglauca) water well clusters near very old camps. They also seem strung along the Gingie rd songline but can be found anywhere there are lots of whitewoods I think? How much manipulation was needed to make them hold water I don’t know but their heartwood can be quite soft and powdery. See below a recently fallen whitewood branch.
Since seeing the noongar Gnaama boorna around Albany in W.A, I’ve found out a bit more about wooden water-holding vessels over east. A weilwun/ wayilwan woman I know been lent me ‘Gunyah, Goondie + Wurley -The Aboriginal Architecture of Australia’ by Paul Memmott. I found this reference to water holding trees,
Memmott’s book references ‘Our sandhill country’ by A.M. Duncan-kemp on hollow tree butts placed on “very dry much- frequented tracks” (songlines) containing water & kept full by waterskins carried from the nearest water hole – see below
My friend also saw a ..”hollow wooden water carrier at the Mungo info centre. It had a resin sealing one end, about 50cm long & about as round as would be comfortable to be gripped.” on a recent trip to the Mungo Nat. park. These are examples of portable water containers and found along treeless plains and semi deserts or in areas where the trees are small and not suitable I would have thought.
The gnaarma boorna & gali-birraa ( gali =water birraa=whitewood ) are different in that the water holding tree is alive & not transportable. The difference in species used reflects the difference in climate between SthWest W.A & NthWest NSW. You can see with the gali-biraa on the left below how a bulbous shape with small aperture would reduce greatly reduce evaporation compared to the 2 gnaarma boorna on the right. The WWW has a bulging unnatural shape and that burl on the side of the opening is the result of stone axe cuts where the outer layers have healed over.
Another common design feature of the gali birraa is prior trunk removal leaving a funnel created by the remaining trunks to empty into a central crotch. Of course this would have to have been planned for generations ago by pinching out the main bole. Primary trunk removal forces the tree to branch out – I see it all the time with eucalypts. Reading “Gunyah, Goondie + Wurley – The Aboriginal Architecture of Australia” made me realise just how much wood the people must have needed. One camp needed multiple fires for the different shelters & separate roasting pits and cooking fires for men & women. As well as the depletion of game & water reserves the exhaustion of the close timber supply would force a nomadic lifestyle. See below some multi-trunked WWWs.
The reclining trunk with 1 or 2 holes was also a popular shape with the gali birraa makers. I think the rain water can enter multiple holes and pool in the bottom storage. See below
The more gaping holes in the whitewood the less stable it becomes & the more prone to disease and rot. I don’t know the life expectancy of WWWs but without the people who used to tend to these trees I presume we are seeing the last of them. Whitewood sap/gum was edible, and grubs could be found inside the birraa tree as well. There is a very interesting gali birraa in a cluster near an old camp here that’s burnt inside the hollow. I think the internal fire lit, or charcoal placed inside the WWW may have been a way of expanding and/or sealing the space inside this tree. The heartwood in often soft & powdery & can be used as flour if desperate apparently. Its also possible the crumbly timber could be mixed with sap & rammed with a digging tool to make it watertight. There may be other cultural reasons why there is charcoal & fire damage inside this old whitewood but same as with the TinTs no one is interested enough to find out.
As well as WWWs at this place there are ringtrees which signal the availability of water in this part of the country. The photo belows show a deliberately entwined different species ring – whitewood, supplejack & nepine. Rare & time consuming to create I think.
Above are 2 low leopardwood rings that live here as well – leopardwoods & whitewoods grow on similar soils. They also have a very very close relationship when growing side by side. It would be interesting to see whats going on between these trees as they both encroach on each other. Is there any merging of their vascular systems (inosculation) or do they just overlap at the edges?
Some of the gali birraa crotches I found 1 month after rain had no water but were still moist with delectable humus rich soil.
I kept wondering with substrate like that, where were all the guests? Plenty of climbing saltbush & native burrs
but no trees until finally this little wilga below.
. Natural or cultural I don’t know but only a K from the woolshed paleochannel well and near other WWWs & a leopardwood ringtree. Also in the vicinity was this extensively manipulated myall that would have formed the living ridgepoles of a bark shelter. Dead now but still intact – just waiting for the application of leafy branches & bark slabs then Bobs your uncle …
BTW Juniper publishers have accepted my last article titled “What the Ancestors Knew and the Limits of European Nomenclature” You can try the link below and if the ‘article in press’ page comes up, click on the PDF or Audio box. https://juniperpublishers.com/jojwb/articleinpress-jojwb.php
This is the link to the Taylor & Francis online mini paper that was published last year. Im going to write another one on the WWWs / gali birraa but have to find another suitable open access journal first. https://doi.org/10.1080/15592324.2023.2286392
