The Origins of the Bondi Name

One of the reasons Australia is in a dangerous decline is how little of Australia's true history is known to kids when they leave school. This leaves them extremely vulnerable to be exploited by leftists peddling their false narratives, where they can be infected with destructive resentment, division, and self-hatred. 

As Orwell warned: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

In that respect, I'm using my time to put together a series of books on Australian history. The first is based on the history of Bondi Beach, which is intimately connected to Australia's history. 

Here's a draft of one of the first paragraphs (and I'd greatly appreciate any feedback and thoughts that Confidential Daily readers might have in the comments):

There are varying opinions among historians as to the origin of the name “Bondi,” and over the years the spelling has included Bondee, Boondi, Boondye, and Bundye.

One theory suggests that Bondi was named after Bondy, a village 7km north-east of Paris.

Another more widely accepted theory suggests that Bondi is a local aboriginal word for a ‘place where a fight with nullas occurred’ – with a ‘nulla’ being one of the names to describe a wooden club used by aboriginals as weapons for hunting and warfare.

To the modern-day romanticist that likes to believe that aboriginals lived in a utopian paradise, where a peaceful, harmonious civilisation lived gently with nature for tens of thousands of years a kind of southern hemisphere, the idea that Bondi takes its name from a place known for violent inter-tribal warfare is awkward and inconvenient.

However, the truth is that Australian aboriginal society pre-British settlement was brutal, harsh, and violent, especially for women.  Captain Watkin Tench (1758-1833) was a marine officer with the First Fleet, and in his published journal  A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, in New South Wales, he writes of the famous Bennelong, whom he referred to as ‘Baneelon’.

“Love and war seemed his favourite pursuits; in both of which he had suffered severely. His head was disfigured by several scars; a spear had passed through his arm, and another through his leg.  Half of one of his thumbs was carried away; and the mark of a wound appeared on the back of his hand. The cause and attendant circumstances of all these disasters, except one, he related to us.

 “But the wound on the back of your hand, Baneelon!  How did you get that?”

He laughed, and owned that it was received in carrying off a lady of another tribe by force.  “I was dragging her away.  She cried aloud, and stuck her teeth in me.”

“And what did you do then?”

“I knocked her down, and beat her till she was insensible, and covered with blood.  Then...”

Bennelong (Baleeon) was a member of the Wangal clan, based around the south side of the Parramatta River. He attempted to enlist the British officers of the First Fleet, whom he had befriended, to use their guns and join him in massacring the enemy Cameeragal (Cammeraygal) tribe, based around Sydney’s lower north shore. Watkin Tench wrote:

“Whenever he (BennelongBaleeon) recounted his battles, “poised his lance, and showed how fields were won”, the most violent exclamations of rage and vengeance against his competitors in arms, those of the tribe called Cameeragal in particular, would burst from him. And he never failed at such times to solicit the governor to accompany him, with a body of soldiers, in order that he might exterminate this hated name.” 

The written record left by early observers such as Watkin Tench is not the fantasy of later culture wars; it is direct testimony of the violence that Aboriginal women experienced:

“But indeed the women are in all respects treated with savage barbarity. Condemned not only to carry the children but all other burthens, they meet in return for submission only with blows, kicks and every other mark of brutality.  When an Indian (Aboriginal) is provoked by a woman, he either spears her or knocks her down on the spot.  On this occasion he always strikes on the head, using indiscriminately a hatchet, a club or any other weapon which may chance to be in his hand.”

Watkins also gave a specific example of the aboriginal beauty named Gooreedeena:

“The heads of the women are always consequently seen in the state which I found that of Gooreedeeana. But I cannot break from Gooreedeeana so abruptly.  She belonged to the tribe of Cameragal and rarely came among us. 

One day, however, she entered my house to complain of hunger.  She excelled in beauty all their females I ever saw.  Her age about eighteen, the firmness, the symmetry and the luxuriancy of her bosom might have tempted painting to copy its charms.

Her mouth was small and her teeth, though exposed to all the destructive purposes to which they apply them, were white, sound and unbroken. Her countenance, though marked by some of the characteristics of her native land, was distinguished by a softness and sensibility unequalled in the rest of her countrywomen, and I was willing to believe that these traits indicated the disposition of her mind.  I had never before seen this elegant timid female, of whom I had often heard; but the interest I took in her led me to question her about her husband and family.

She answered me by repeating a name which I have now forgotten, and told me she had no children.  I was seized with a strong propensity to learn whether the attractions of Gooreedeeana were sufficiently powerful to secure her from the brutal violence with which the women are treated, and as I found my question either ill understood or reluctantly answered,

I proceeded to examine her head, the part on which the husband's vengeance generally alights.  With grief I found it covered by contusions and mangled by scars.  The poor creature, grown by this time more confident from perceiving that I pitied her, pointed out a wound just above her left knee which she told me was received from a spear, thrown at her by a man who had lately dragged her by force from her home to gratify his lust.

I afterwards observed that this wound had caused a slight lameness and that she limped in walking.  I could only compassionate her wrongs and sympathize in her misfortunes.  To alleviate her present sense of them, when she took her leave I gave her, however, all the bread and salt pork which my little stock afforded.”

With the Australian continent cut off from the rest of the world by rising sea levels, Aboriginal society developed in isolation from other civilisations. There were no domesticated animals and no horses available for transport or to replace manpower.

The Australian natural environment was harsh, forbidding, and unforgiving. Mere survival was a daily struggle, and for tens of thousands of years, there was little advancement in many significant areas of technology. No written language developed, nor ceramics or metallurgy, and only the most primitive canoes and tools were used.

Far from being a society living in peace and harmony with nature, it was a society marked by violence and high rates of infant mortality. It is a testament to the endurance and tenacity of Australia’s Aboriginal people that they survived at all.

Such truth-telling is important, as peddling false politicised myths to schoolchildren, that pre-1788 Aboriginal society was a peaceful and harmonious Garden of Eden destroyed by evil and racist Europeans, only breeds destructive resentment, division, and self-hatred.

If Bondi does take its name from a place known for inter-tribal warfare “a place where a fight with nullas occurred,” then perhaps the name is a reminder of something far more universal than we might not prefer to acknowledge: that human history is marked by violence and oppression, and it is a constant reminder that the freedoms Australians enjoy today did not come for free; they came from the blood, sweat, toil, and sacrifice of past generations, freedoms that we have a duty to protect.

“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again.”
– Ronald Reagan