Cordage, Biomaterial Adhesives & Carrying Technologies

1. Tensile Plant Fibers of the Southwest Bioregion

The manufacturing of flexible cordage, string, nets, and woven containers represented a foundational technological complex within the Bibbullmun economy.¹ While colonial accounts frequently overlooked Indigenous textiles, women craftsmen extracted and spun high-tensile fibers from endemic plants including sedges (Lepidosperma gladiatum, Baumea juncea), rushes (Juncus kraussii), and the inner bast bark of trees such as kurrajong (Brachychiton gregorii) and flooded gum (Eucalyptus rudis).²

2. Fiber Extraction, Retting, and Two-Ply Thigh-Spinning

Processing plant tissues into spinning fibers required multi-stage biochemical retting.³ Stems of Lepidosperma sedges were harvested during late spring (Kambarang), soaked in fresh waterholes for several days to ferment and soften cellular pectins, and scraped with freshwater mussel shells (marlo) to isolate longitudinal cellulose bast fibers.⁴ Women then spun the fibers using the thigh-rolling method: rolling two separate bundles of fibers down the bare thigh with the palm of the hand to induce high S-twist, then rolling them backward together to create a continuous, tightly interlocked two-ply Z-twist cord.⁵

3. Carrying Technologies: The Boodjar Bag and Curing Nets

Spun cordage was knotted into diverse utilitarian containers.⁶ The primary carrying apparatus was the woven net bag (boodjar bag or gotch), carried by women suspended from the forehead or over the shoulder.⁷ These flexible, expandable string bags carried heavy loads of freshly harvested root crops (warrain), zamia nuts, infants, and domestic tools.⁸ For aquatic harvesting, heavy cordage was knotted into expansive fishing seine nets and waterfowl flight nets spanning dozens of meters, capable of withstanding significant hydrodynamic drag in tidal estuaries.⁹

4. Gendered Expertise and Technological Mastery

Cordage manufacture was primarily the domain of women, whose specialized technological expertise underpinned the entire extractive economy of the Bibbullmun Sovereign Nation.¹⁰ Without their high-strength nets and bags, large-scale kangaroo drives, estuarine fishing, and bulk root crop harvesting would have been impossible, illustrating the central economic power of women in traditional society.¹¹