PUNQ Tour: Mungalla Station

'This is an authentic Aboriginal experience that will stay with you long after you return home.'

PUNQ and Mungalla Station have collaborated to create an exclusive bus tour, incorporating the PUNQ program with the Mungalla Station Experience. As you travel from Wulgurukaba & Bindal Country (Townsville) and make your way to Warrgamay, Nywaigi & Bandjin Country (Hinchinbrook) you will see PUNQ's Billboard Exhibition, Both Ways, and hear about the Nywaigi land title. You will also stop at David Rowe's art installation, Site #272, to venture into the tall, swaying cane through crop circle formations while touching on blackbirding and the history of sugar-cane farm labor. After visiting some of the PUNQ pop ups around town, it will be time to head to Mungalla Station for a Kup Murri lunch, Mungalla's traditional style underground cooking of assorted meats and vegetables. You'll then enjoy the Mungalla Experience Tour, exploring the property established by James Cassady, who fled the potato famine of Ireland and created a pastoral dynasty. Visit the birthplace of the world famous Droughtmaster cattle breed, the original homestead, the graves of James Cassady and his son. Experience the Mungalla wetlands which have been restored from the depredation of introduced weeds and see the magnificent aquatic birdlife of North Queensland. Be amazed by the story of the Aboriginal people from Mungalla Station and surrounding areas that were exhibited as cannibals and savages in the nineteenth century circuses and sideshows of Europe and America. This powerful story is told through an award winning pictorial exhibition housed permanently in the historic homestead.

About Mungalla Station

Mungalla Station is located in north Queensland, between the cities of Townsville and Cairns, 12 kilometres east of the town of Ingham. This area is the traditional country of the Nywaigi Aboriginal people, who have occupied these lands for thousands of years. Nywaigi ancestral land is approximately the coastal region from the Herbert River in the north to Rollingstone in the south, and to Stone River in the west.

For 120 years however, Mungalla was the property of European settlers. From the 1860s Aboriginal people had been dispersed from the coastal areas of north Queensland as the sugar cane and cattle industries encroached on their traditional lands. The Mungalla cattle property was founded in 1882 by James Cassady, a pioneer of the north Queensland pastoral industry, but he allowed the Nywaigi people to continue living on the property and was a strong advocate for Aboriginal people. However, again in the twentieth century, Nywaigi and other Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands under government-sponsored programmes. Many were relocated to Palm Island, off the nearby coast, which is not part of Nywaigi country.

During the occupation by the Cassady family, Mungalla was also home to people from the Pacific Islands, Kanakas, as they were called then, or South Sea Islanders. They were originally brought to Queensland to work on sugar cane plantations.

In 1999, when Mungalla was purchased by the Indigenous Land Corporation, the ownership returned to the Nywaigi people, who now own the 880 hectares that makes up the property today. The property was purchased to benefit the Aboriginal community financially, socially and spiritually.

The Mission Statement of the traditional owners is as follows: Mungalla Station is a resource owned by the Nywaigi Traditional Owners for the purpose of fostering Aboriginal cultural values by building economic and cultural opportunities through the careful use of our country as a legacy for our children.

Event Information

Pop Up PUNQ Tour Site-Specific Billboard Exhibition

PUNQ TOUR DETAILS

PUNQ Tour: Mungalla Station
$150 per adult | Discount for AFCM members and ticket holders
7:30am - 6pm Monday 2 August 2021
PUNQ and Mungalla Station have collaborated to create an exclusive bus tour, incorporating the PUNQ program with the Mungalla Station Experience. As you travel from Wulgurukaba & Bindal Country (Townsville) and make your way to Warrgamay, Nywaigi & Bandjin Country (Hinichbrook) you will see PUNQ's Billboard Exhibition, Both Ways, and hear about the Nywaigi land title. You will also stop at David Rowe's art installation, Site #272, to venture into the tall, swaying cane through crop circle formations while touching on blackbirding and the history of sugar-cane farm labor. After visiting some of the PUNQ pop ups around town, it will be time to head to Mungalla Station for a Kup Murri lunch, Mungalla's traditional style underground cooking of assorted meats and vegetables. You'll then enjoy the Mungalla Experience Tour before returning to Wulgurukaba & Bindal Country (Townsville).