RediscoveringIndigenous Languages

Call number: B 387

Author: Bunce, Daniel

Date: 7 December 1846 - 2 March 1849

Description: Daniel Bunce (1813-1872), botanist, was born near Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, England. He was trained as a gardener and botanist, and emigrated to Hobart Town on Tasmania in 1833. In 1839 he went to Port Phillip, immediately joined a party of Aboriginals on a journey to Western Port, and made an intensive study of their spoken language. He established a nursery at St Kilda. In 1846 Bunce joined Ludwig Leichhardt on his second attempt to cross Australia from east to west, and this item is his notebook from that expedition. Leaving the Darling Downs in December, they were back within six months, nearly dead from privation. After his return Bunce followed the course of the Murray River to the sea. He was invited to join Leichhardt's expedition of 1848 but refused, claiming dissatisfaction over the allocation of any new botanical discoveries. Bunce's study of Aboriginal languages on his journeys in 1839 and 1846 led to the publication in Melbourne in 1851 of his Language of the Aborigines. In 1858 he became director of the Geelong Botanical Gardens, which he designed and planted with a large variety of species (From http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bunce-daniel-1847)

Communities: Jagara, Wiradjuri