Kooyamulyup

Gooyamulyup / Goo'yamulyup

Description & Location

The camping ground at the foot of Mount Eliza, extending from Goonininup (Kennedy’s Fountain) towards the present site of the University of Western Australia.

The site is associated with the many kooya (frogs) that flourished in the area. These would have provided a rich source of food, together with crabs gathered by the women and children. 

George Fletcher Moore, a colonist and part of Western Australia’s early ruling elite, developed friendly relationships with many Noongar and Aboriginal people and recorded some of these interactions in his diaries. One of these excerpts details how Moore and a Noongar boy spent the afternoon digging for and eating frog eggs from female kooya, which were prized due to their taste. Noongar women would use their wanna (digging sticks) to dig the kooya out from the ground, as green kooya who lived aboveground in water were not considered good for eating.

Another prominent colonist, Sir George Grey, recorded how Noongar women gathered food from the lakes and swamps such as kooya during Birak (December - January) during his exploration of the bilya (Swan River). The women would plunge their arms into kooya holes in the mud up to their shoulder, drag the kooya out, and using their finger and thumb in one quick pinch would remove the lower portion of the kooya intestines from the body. The kooya were then cooked slowly in ashes before being shared around as delicacies. When Sir George Grey was found starving during a trek, it was Noongar women who gathered kooya, yakan (turtle), and bayoo (processed zamia seeds) to “make him fat.” 

References 

Bates, D. Manuscript 365/4/174, Notebook 20, p.57.

Bates, D. Manuscript 365/4/179, Notebook 20, p.63.

Bates, D. (1909, December 25). Oldest Perth. Western Mail, p. 16. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article37401699.

Bates, D. (1929, July 4). Aboriginal Perth. Western Mail, p. 70. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article38887581.

Grey, G. (1841). Journals of two expeditions of discovery in north-west and western Australia, during the years 1837, 38 and 39…, 2 vols. London : Thomas W. Borges &​ Co.

Moore, G. F. (1884). Diary of ten years: eventful life of an early settler in western Australia; and also A descriptive vocabulary of the language of the aborigines. London: M. Walbrook.

South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council. (n.d.) Kaartdijin Noongar. Retrieved from https://www.noongarculture.org.au/food/.