NAMBOUR is thousands of years old! Like many towns in Australia, it began as an Aboriginal camping ground that probably flourished on the same spot for millenia.
What was Nambour like before white settlement? The first white visitors describe a grassy, open forest flat (kept clear by regular Indigenous firing).
Namba flat” was roughly what we now know as Nambour Showgrounds – stretching south to around Quota Park. Such campsites were used by at least a few Aboriginal people all year around, but there was always a peak period of occupation, which matched times of important festivities or hunting/ gathering drives. For Nambour, that period was the height of summer.
For about six weeks, Namba flat was dotted with huts – as many as 600 inhabitants. The huts were placed fairly well apart – each constructed of bent sticks, grass and bark - spread out over a large area of flats and ridges. Nambour camp also featured a palisaded fighting ring, a corroboree (dancing) area, and – beyond the current Railway Station - a bora (ceremonial) ground.
On the outskirts of today’s Nambour – around Coes Creek at what is now Burnside – lay another very large encampment and major tool-working site. This camp may have been been known as Perwillowen, which remains the name for that area. The word seems to describe a species of dove.
Over the well-timbered ridges leading in and out of the Petrie Creek encampment were Aboriginal pathways ancestral to some of our current roads. These were a metre or more wide. A portion of this, with associated scarred trees, can still be seen at Koala Park.
Before white settlement, the Aboriginal encampment of Nambour was a significant corroboree site. Thus sometimes the name is erroneously translated as ‘place of corroboree.’ It seems to have been one of the more important stops for groups travelling to the tri-annual bunya gatherings near Maleny.
