Dundalli

Dundalli (1820- 1855) was an Aboriginal lawman who figured prominently in accounts of conflict between European settlers and indigenous aboriginal peoples in the area of Brisbane in South East Queensland. Traditionally described as a murderer, savage and terrorist, he is now thought variously to have been a guerilla leader or to have coordinated a decade-long resistance to white colonization the area. He was hung publicly in Brisbane in 1855 by order of the Sheriff of New South Wales.

Dundalli was born into the Dalla tribes, probably as a son of the Dalambara clan. Together with his brother Oumulli, he grew up in the Blackall Range. The area had a rich regional economy, with fertile ranges spread out over areas of spectacular scenery, with waterfalls plunging into deep gorges, These uplands of the Glass House Mountains and the D'Aguilar, Conondale and Jimna ranges were the homelands of the Dalla, who spoke a language closely related to Gubbi Gubbi. His name Dundalli was that taken on his initiation into full tribal status, and meant wonga pigeon. His brother Oumulli's name meant "breast", which may also refer to the same species of pigeon. Dundalli grew to be very tall, and the judge at his trial recorded that he was

Dundalli together with his fellow clansman Anbaybury was selected to lead a Dalla delegation which was organized to treat with German missionaries at Toorbul in order to invite them to set up an outpost in Dalla country. In June 1842 Carl Wilhelm Schmidt, with nine Aborigines, had explored the country round the Bunya Mountains, and had reported on the practice of squatters using gifts of flour laced with strychnine to local natives in order to clear out Aborigines in area beyond the confines of areas were settlement had been authorized. The encounter took place in August 1841. The two missionaries in question were J. P. Niqué and A. T. W. Hartenstein who, with several others, had trekked north from Brisbane as part of a lay mission recruited by John Dunmore Lang to work in the Moreton Bay area. They set up their mission 6 miles north of Nundah on Turrbal lands in 1838. Sometime around the middle of the 1840s, perhaps around Cambayo's spearing of a shepherd in 1843, Dundalli was adopted by the Djindubari people, the traditional owners of Bribie Island and he moved over to that area. Connors dates to this period the transformation of the Djindubari from generous hosts to wandering or displaced Europeans who found themselves in their midst, to jealous guardians of their prerogatives as owners of the resources of their island. Warrants for his arrest began to be issued in 1846.

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