bombora

The word bombora is possibly from the Dharug language, the language which was spoken around Sydney Cove. It may have been the Aboriginal name of the particular bombora off Dobroyd Head, just inside Sydney Harbour in a direct line from the heads. The term has generalised to refer to any such submerged reef or rock shelf with associated wave formation of which there are a number off the coast of Australia.

Further evidence for its origin in the Sydney Language is the early citation for Bumborah Point in Botany Bay. A boat race, the Cooks River Purse, was held off this point in 1835, the prize being 30 sovereigns. The reef which gives the point its name was the downfall of the Southampton which struck the reef, got off it and was beached on Yarra beach in 1882.

A bombora is a submerged rock shelf which can create a wave that breaks over it. The size of the wave varies with the tide, sometimes being an unbroken swell, at other times being an apparently inexplicable surf, usually with waves that stand up abruptly.  They were dangerous because a ship could run aground on them, or because a sudden wave appearing in an otherwise calm ocean could swamp a boat that was caught broadside to it.

Because this was an Aboriginal word that was being Anglicised, there are in the early records many different spellings. Boomborer seems to be an attempt to link it to the sound that the waves made. The spelling bumborer was common in the 1800s, a purely phonetic attempt which lost out ultimately to the current spelling bombora. And the spelling bumborah is fossilised in the name of the point in Botany Bay.

An early account of a holiday cruise to the Myall Lakes by a keen fisherman comments on the bumborer:

Over the bumborer … there was hardly a movement in the water to betray the large, sunken rock, which, in bad weather, breaks so savagely. The sea was calm as a mill-pond, but there was a gloomy haze over the land as far as the eye could reach north and south. Even the 2-fathom bumborer away to the S.W. made no sigh as we passed within a few furlongs of it, on our way to the Port Stephens group of islands.

A letter to the Editor published in the SMH in 1885 asks ‘Have the harbour authorities, by sweeping with a chain, or other mode, ascertained the condition of the bottom at this part of the harbour?’  The part the writer refers to is the area near Middle Head where bumborers had been known to sink boats.

In 1901 there were many accounts of the sinking of a drogher or dredger at Shellharbor.  The boat had put in at a sheltered cove because of the rising seas, but on the Sunday night the anchor cable gave way and the boat drifted.

“Then our position became a critical one, for we were between two reefs, and as the night was pitch dark and foggy we could not lay a course to get out. There was nothing to direct us. At that time we had a full head of steam, but our disaster came about half an hour after midnight, when the rudder broke right off … We were nearing the awful Bombora Rock, a small reef or shoal that lies about 500 yards from the shore. If we could have got 10 yards on either side of it we could have cleared it, and that was our hope in trying to make a sail with the blankets, but we had no chance.’

These days bomboras are less of a menace, being well documented for ships that have the means to propel a boat along a particular course and not just go where the waves and the currents take them. The fear of the bomobora has been replaced by the appreciation of fishermen and surfies.  There are reports in the early 1900s of the fishing at the bombora at Dobroyd Point, with ‘the capture of fish from schnapper to shark, groper to stingaree, flathead, salmon, etc. Also many kinds of rockfish.’ These are matched by advertising today for fishing expeditions that promise ‘stunning bombora systems’ providing many large fish.

Surfies also have a high regard for them, the swell near a bombora producing waves that are worth the effort of getting out there.  The Atlantics produced a surf rock album titled Bombora, the song with that name becoming a major hit.

Of course, in the Australian way, the word was eventually shortened to the affectionately styled bommie.  A coral bommie is one where the underlying structure is a coral reef but in a column shape.  This presents a danger to shipping, particular if the top of the column is not visible.  The discerning might see that the flow of water around it is different but not everyone watches the surface of the ocean with such care.

Bomboras can still be a trap for the unwary but, for most of us, no longer undertaking hazardous sea voyages in sailing ships, they are a beautiful feature of the seascape which we can admire from afar.