One of the indigenous people encountered by the First Fleeters was Morooberra. The Judge-Advocate, David Collins, who wrote one of the principal accounts:

Collins, David. 1975 [1798]. An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, With Remarks on the Dispositions, Customs, Manners. etc., of the Native Inhabitants of that Country: Volume I. Sydney: A.H. & A.W. Reed in association with the Royal Australian Historical Society.

mentioned him as follows, from October 1796:

. . . early in the morning, Mo-roo-ber-ra, the brother, and Cole-be, another relation of Bone-da, seized upon a lad named Tar-ra-bil-long, and with a club each gave him a wound in his head, which laid the skull bare. Dar-ring-ha, the sister of Bone-da, had her share in the bloody rite, and pushed at the unoffending boy with a doo-ull or short spear. He was brought into the town and placed at the hospital, and, though the surgeon pronounced from the nature of his wounds that his recovery was rather doubtful, he was seen walking about the day following. [Collins I:489]

Collins reported on him in his second volume:

• 10 Dec 1797: Collins II, 47

Cole-be knew that this would ensure him the appellation of jeerun, or coward, and that the friends of Ye-ra-ni-be would as certainly take up his cause. As the consequences might be very serious if he should die of the blow, he thought it prudent to abscond for a while, and Ye-ra-ni-be was taken care of by some of his white friends. This happened on the 10th, and on the 16th he died. In this interval he was constantly attended by some of his male and female associates, particularly by his two friends, Collins (for Gnung-a Gnung-a still went by the late judge-advocate’s name) and Mo-roo-bra. On one of the nights when a most dismal song of lamentation had been sung over him, in which the women were the principal performers, his male friends, after listening for some time with great apparent attention, suddenly started up, and, seizing their weapons, went off in a most savage rage, determined on revenge. Knowing pretty well where to meet with Cole-be, they beat him very severely, but would not kill him, reserving that gratification of their revenge until the fate of their companion should be decided. On the following night, Collins and Mo-roo-bra attacked a relation of Cole-be’s, Boo-ra-wan-ye, whom they beat about the head with such cruelty that his recovery was [47] doubtful. As their vengeance extends to all the family and relations of a culprit, what a misfortune it must be to be connected with a man of a choleric disposition!

Ye-ra-ni-be was buried the day after his decease by the side of the public road, below the military barracks.

• Jan 1798: Collins II, 58:

Notwithstanding the severe trial which Cole-be had been put to for the death of Ye-ra-ni-be, the friends of that young man had not thought it sufficient to atone for his loss. One of them, Mo-roo-bra, in company with some other natives, meeting with Cole-be, made an attack upon him, with a determination to put an end to the business and his life together. Cole-be, not yet recovered of the wounds that he had received in the last affair, was unable to make much resistance; and, after receiving several blows on the head, was supposed to have been dispatched; but Mo-roo-bra, as they were quitting him, seeing him revive, and attempting to rise, returned to finish this savage business; which so exasperated another native, that he snatched up a spear, and in a rage threw it with all his force at Mo-roo-bra. The spear entered his right side, just over the hip bone, and went inclining downwards quite through the body, penetrating the bladder in its passage. Of this wound he died in about an hour.

It is tempting to assume that there is a connection between Mo-roo-bra’s name, and the Sydney beachside suburb of Maroubra, and to suppose that the suburb might have been named after the colourful figure Mo-roo-bra. It is tempting too to speculate on a meaning for the name, and ‘path to the ceremonial ground’ has suggested itself from the following:

The Geographical Names Board provides the following information about a point just south of Maroubra, on the north side of Long Bay:

“Boora Point (Point forming northern entrance to Long Bay – Boora was the Aboriginal Name for Long Bay.)

Keith Vincent Smith states the view:

“The name Moorooboora means ‘pathway to Long Bay’, being derived from muru (‘pathway’) and Boora (‘Long Bay’). This is how the present seaside suburb of Maroubra gets its name.” (National Library of Australia News, June 2006: Vol. XVI:ix)

Two other sources give another view as to the meaning of the name:

The principal idea here is ‘good’. However, this is unlikely as it is based on a word of the Kamilaroi language, the language of the distant Walgett district:

None of the other coastal or inland languages offer anything comparable.

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Until today I might have jumped to the wrong conclusion over the meaning of the name Marubara.

Just like Keith Vincent Smith, I had thought ‘Maroubra’ meant ‘path (muru) to ceremonial ground (bura)’.

I was looking at a word list for the Muruwari language on the Queensland border, and it contained the word ‘bark’, meaning both ‘to bark, as a dog’, and ‘bark of a tree’. The only alternative word I could come up with to distinguish the two ideas was to substitute ‘woof’ for ‘bark as a dog’. I made the alteration, feeling foolish, in all the databases in which the ‘bark as a dog’ idea occurred. I also noticed:

The ‘n’ in ‘nurbi’ looks as if it might have been a transcription error for ‘m’; the ‘thunder’ interpretation suggested a common thread of ‘loud noise’; and the general appearance of the words called ‘Maroubra’ to mind.

Further investigation provided the following results:

These are from other languages: Wiradhuri of inland NSW, and Nganawal of the Canberra district, Gundungurra of the Burragorang valley and the southern mountainous district, Dhurga from the coast around Jervis Bay, and even Dangatti from the north coast. Hovever, as has been noted, ‘marubi’ was recorded in Sydney, and the clearly related word ‘murangal’ for ‘thunder’ was noted by several recorders, as shown below.

This evidence suggests that ‘Maroubra’ might not mean ‘the path to the ceremonial ground’ (muru-bura ) but instead ‘thunder-having’, or ‘sound of breakers present’, or similar, anyway, to do with sound.

Although there are no records other than Mitchell’s word for ‘lightning’, to confirm the idea, It is possible that the base word for ‘loud noise’ might be ‘marab’, or perhaps ‘maraba’ or similar.

To this would be attached a ‘proprietive’ suffix something like ‘arai’, meaning ‘having’. This suffix occurs in the language names ‘Wira-dhuri’ and ‘Kamil-aroi’, and in abundant exmples from those languages. Although there are equally abundant examples for the complementary ‘abessive’ or ‘lacking’ suffix in the Sydney Language (‘Biyal Biyal’), there are no clearly identified records for the ‘having’ suffix in Sydney. But there are many words that are candidates, such as the following:

So ‘Maroubra’ might be ‘murab-ara(i)’: ‘loud-noise-having’. The suburb of Maroubra is by the sea. The sea is noisy, as it crashes on the nearby rocks.

JS Monday 30 May 2011