Bunjil

Creator of the Kulin

Bunjil is the creator ancestor of the Kulin nations of central Victoria, among them the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung, Boon Wurrung, Wadawurrung, Taungurung, and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples. He takes the form of the wedge-tailed eagle, and he is one of the two moiety ancestors of the Kulin, the other being Waa (Waang), the crow; every Kulin person belongs to Bunjil's moiety or Waa's, which governs marriage and relationships. The Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation and other Kulin organisations share Bunjil's story publicly today.

What he made

In publicly shared Kulin tellings, Bunjil shaped the land, its mountains, rivers, plants, and animals, and made the first people, and gave them the law by which to live. His brother Pallian, who had charge of the waters, is said in many tellings to have brought the first women from the water. Bunjil's family includes two wives and a son, Binbeal, the rainbow. When his work was done, he went up into the sky.

In the stars

Museums Victoria, drawing on Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri knowledge, reports that Bunjil is associated with the star Altair, and his two wives, in the form of black swans, with the stars on either side of it. The only known rock painting of Bunjil is at Bunjil's Shelter near Stawell, on Djab Wurrung Country.

Earlier records

Nineteenth-century colonists such as William Thomas and Robert Brough Smyth recorded Bunjil stories and often described him as a "Supreme Being"; those descriptions reflect the recorders' own religious frameworks as well as what Kulin people told them. The Kulin nations' own tellings are the authority for his story.