The Gadubanud (Katabanut) people occupied the rainforest plateau and rugged coastline of Cape Otway

Cape Otway

Cape Otway is a cape in south Victoria, Australia on the Great Ocean Road; much of the area is enclosed in the Otway National Park.-History:...

 in Western Victoria covering the present towns of Lorne

Lorne, Victoria

Lorne is a seaside town on Louttit Bay in Victoria, Australia. It is situated about the Erskine River and is a popular destination on the Great Ocean Road tourist route...

 and Apollo Bay

Apollo Bay, Victoria

Apollo Bay is a coastal town in southwestern Victoria, Australia. It is situated on the eastern side of Cape Otway, along the edge of the Barham River and on the Great Ocean Road, in the Colac Otway Shire. The town has a population of 1380....

. The Gellibrand and Barwon River

Barwon River (Victoria)

The Barwon River rises in the Otway Ranges of Victoria, Australia, runs through Winchelsea and the city of Geelong, where it is joined by the Moorabool River, and enters the sea at Barwon Heads after passing through Lake Connewarre on the Bellarine Peninsula...

s are likely territorial borders with the Wada wurrung to the north east, Gulidjan

Gulidjan

The Gulidjan, also known as the Colac tribe, Colijan, Colagdians, Kolakgnat, are an indigenous Australian tribe whose traditional lands cover the Lake Colac region of Victoria, Australia. They occupied the grasslands, woodlands, volcanic plains and lakes region east of Lake Corangamite, west of the...

 to the north and Girai Wurrung

Girai wurrung

The Girai wurrung are Indigenous Australian people who traditionally occupied the territory between Mount Emu Creek and the Hopkins River up to Mount Hamilton, and the Western Otways from the Gellibrand River to the Hopkins River...

 to the west. Gadubanud means literally the King Parrot people. There has been no documented interraction with the Gadubanud since 1846,. although some may have found refuge at the Weslayan mission station at Birregurra

Birregurra, Victoria

Birregurra is a town in Victoria, Australia approximately 130 km south-west of Melbourne. At the 2006 census, Birregurra had a population of 688....

 and later the Framlingham

Framlingham, Victoria

Framlingham was an Aboriginal reserve established by the Board for the Protection of Aborigines in Victoria, Australia in 1861. It was located beside the Hopkins River in the territory of the Girai wurrung near the boundary with the Gunditjmara, not to far from Warrnambool on the south-west coast...

 mission station. Today the Gunditjmara

Gunditjmara

Gunditjmara, or Gundidj for short, are an Indigenous Australian group from western Victoria . Their neighbours to the west were the Buandig people, to the north the Jardwadjali and Djab wurrung peoples, and in the east the Girai wurrung people.The name may also be spelt Gournditch-Mara...

 people are the traditional custodians of Gadubanud lands, although there are Aboriginal people in the area today who trace their ancestry to the Gudabanud.

Society

It is known that the Gadubanud people traded spear wood for Mount William green stone mined by the Wurundjeri

Wurundjeri

The Wurundjeri are a people of the Indigenous Australian nation of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin alliance, who occupy the Birrarung Valley, its tributaries and the present location of Melbourne, Australia...

 when tribes from across Victoria met at traditional ceremonies at Mount Noorat, Mount Napier and Gariwerd. According to Clark "Ethnohistoric and linguistic information on the people of the Cape Otway Ranges is very thin."

Cape Otway has many middens which provide an indication of the varied diet of the Gadubanud. Fragments found in midderns include turban shells, abalone, periwinkle, elephant fish, chiton, beaked mussel and limpets. It is known that seals, cape barren geese, eels and ducks were also eaten, along with New Zealand spinach, tubers and berries. The Gadubanud made bark canoes for use in the rivers, lakes, estuaries and along the coast. Records from sailing ships reported Aboriginal people sailing close to shore in this region.

During the 1830s Gadubanud successfully avoided interactions with European settlers. Early squatters thought the Otways were uninhabited. At least five clans are recorded including Bangura gundidj, Guringid gundidj, Ngalla gundidj, Ngarowurd gundidj and Yan Yan Gurt clan. The Gadubanud
were considered mainmait (wild) by neighbouring language groups the Wada Wurrung and Girai Wurring.

Language

Little linguistic material has been recorded for the Gadubanud language. A connection with the Gulidjan to their north is suggested in the literature. The language was first identified by James Dawson in 1881 and means King Parrot language

History

Chief Protector George Augustus Robinson

George Augustus Robinson

George Augustus Robinson was a builder and untrained preacher. He was the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Port Phillip District from 1839 to 1849...

 on his trip to Port Fairy in 1842 met three Gadubanud people when he visited the mouth of the Hopkins River. From this interaction some clan information and territorial boundaries are recorded. In 1842 Gadubanud robbed an outstation for food and blankets.

Superintendent Charles La Trobe

Charles La Trobe

Charles Joseph La Trobe was the first lieutenant-governor of the colony of Victoria .-Early life:La Trobe was born in London, the son of Christian Ignatius Latrobe, a family of Huguenot origin...

 made three expeditions to reach Cape Otway, and on his third attempt in March 1846 came upon seven Gaduband men and women in the Aire valley.

Blanket Bay massacre

Later in 1846 George D Smythe was contracted to survey the Otways. One of his surveying party, Conroy, was murdered by a party of Gadubanud, although there are no details on whether they may have been provoked in some way. Smythe returned to Melbourne to organise a retaliatory expedition which took place in August 1846. The party, which included several Wada Wurrung people, came across seven Gadubanud at the mouth of the Aire River at Blanket Bay and attacked and killed them. A Report of this massacre was published in the Argus of 1 September 1846.

Ian Clark also reports that a number of further accounts have distorted the massacre by including rape and inflating the number killed, or attributing the attack to a detachment of Native Police Corps

Native Police Corps

An Australian Native Police Corps was first established in 1842 in the Port Phillip District of the Australian colony of New South Wales...

 led by Foster Fyans.

One such story is by Aldo Massola

Aldo Massola

Aldo Massola was an Italian-Australian anthropologist, a curator at the National Museum of Victoria in Melbourne from 1954 to 1964, who overcame scandal in his personal life to author a number of influential books about Victoria's indigenous Koori population.Though his work has been superseded and...

 who detailed the following account:

"In 1848 one of two survivors, a woman who then lived in Warrnambool, told the story:One of the white men had interfered with a lubra, and her husband had killed the aggressor. The Black Police had come shortly after and had shot down indiscriminately the whole of her group, about twenty men, women and children. She and another lubra were only slightly wounded, and hid themselves in the scrub until the attackers left the scene of the massacre. As far as she knew they were the only survivors."

According to Clark, no more recorded interactions occurred after 1846 between the Gadubanud and European settlers.