8

[left margin]
M^r. S. May.
with compliments
FJ Watson

(1)
Union Street,
Toowong, S.W.1.
Nov. 24th, 1942.

Re the place name Dundathu.

Dundathu was originally the name of a sawmill and its township
situated on the bank of the Mary River some nine miles below
Maryborough. This mill was established by Messrs Petti-
grew and Sim in about 1860 and abandoned about 1880, but the
locality and the adjoining river reach retain the name.

The name is derived from the local (Kabi) word, dhan-dauwa-dhu,
meaning"Place of timber" , from dhan, a contraction of dhagun,
dauwa, dry or withered, and dhu, tree or wood, the combined words,
dauwa-dhu, being the nearest translation of the English word
timber, i.e. sawn timber.

It has been generally accepted, probably on the authority of
"Tom Petrie's Reminiscences" that the name, Dundathu ,was identical
with the natives' name for the Kauri pine tree, which Petrie gave
as dundardoom. This arose, no doubt, from the fact that at
Dundathu the first Queensland kauri pine was milled and
exported therefrom ,and it became generally known as Dundathu pine.

The habitat of the kauri pine, Agathis robusta, of South
Queensland, is Great Sandy, or Fraser's Island and a restricted
area of the mainland adjacent thereto ,including the area about
Tin Can Bay, from whence this log timber used to be rafted to
to Dundathu, and , later , to Maryborough sawmills.

The aboriginals' name for the kauri pine throughout the said
area is "nunmula" (nunmoola).

FJ Watson

Note/

I have long been in possession of the above information
but deferred recording it until I could obtain a statement,
from a reliable aboriginal source ,substantiating the word
nunmula, as the Wide Bay aborigines' name for the kauri pine tree,
which I have recently been enabled to do.

FJW