Meaning of Belubula River

Belabula River, Bakers Shaft Reserve

According to Wikipedia, the Belubula River rises midway between Orange and Bathurst in inland NSW and runs westwards until it joins the Lachlan River at Gooloogong midway between Forbes and Cowra. The name is given as meaning ‘stony river or big lagoon’. However, it almost certainly does not mean this.

Belubula, commonly pronounced ‘bee-lubbler’, the second part rhyming with ‘bubbler’, is composed of two Wiradhuri words bila and bula. The first means ‘creek’, ‘stream’, ‘river’, and sometimes a tree that grows by streams, commonly a river oak or swamp oak. And sometimes it might even mean weapons made from this type of wood, such as a shield, or spear.

The second word bula is very common across Australia, meaning ‘two’. While it means ‘two’ just about everywhere, in distant south-west WA it indicates not so much ‘two’ as plurality, and could be translated as ‘plenty’. It even occurs in Tasmania, where in the south-east it still means ‘two’ despite Tasmania being separated from the mainland for 10 000 or so years.

Belubula, or bila bula (properly pronounced beeler booler), would appear to mean ‘stream two’, or ‘two streams’. How might it have acquired such a name?

Here is a possibility: it so happens that just west of Canowindra the Belubula River divides into two streams as the map below indicates. After the dividing, the northern branch retains the name Belubula while the southern branch has the name Cucumber Creek. After about 11 km (but much more if all the twists and turns are taken into account) the stream becomes one again, as the Belubula River.

For a portion of its length the Belabula River has two streams, the second stream known as Cucumber Creek

The name of the second stream, ‘Cucumber’, might not be English as it seems, but an Aboriginal word like it [e.g. gugamba], such as perhaps the following:

Australian	respelt	English	EngJSM	source
"Gugguma"	gagu-ma	"a stump"	stump	Günther (Fraser) [:87:46] [Wira] [NSW]
"Cookamobila"	gugama bila	"A creek with a number of stumps in it"	stump stream	SofM 19040727 [p.88:Critchett Walker] [:90.3:3] [Wira] [NSW]

Jeremy Steele

18 April 2023