[a] The Djabugay word for their ancestral times, beyond their living memory, (also known as 'Story time' or 'Dreamtime') is bulurru[7] being a time when, for instance, it is told the Rainbow Serpent Gudju Gudju, in the form of a giant carpet snake (aka Budadji) traveled through the country, bartering with families along the way exchanging coastal nautilus shells for rainforest products such as dilly bags, his body creating within the landscape everything from Yaln giri (Crystal Cascades) to Ngunbay (Kuranda), moving through the Mowbray River to the hill at Port Douglas, finally coming to rest at Wangal Djungay (Double Island)[8][9] In one account, he was killed by emu men at 'Din din ( the Barron Falls), an incident which unleashed the powerful monsoonal rains on the region.

[10] There were also 2 Bulurru dreamtime brothers, Damarri and Guyala, who laid down the contours, created the plant foods, established the customary law and the system of clan marriage by moieties.

The tale of Budadji's travels along the Barron Gorge is included in the web guide of Queensland Rail to the railways journey from Cairns to Kuranda.

"Dispersals", the euphemism for shooting groups of blacks, were undertaken at Smithfield (1878), at Biboohra near the Clohesy River close to Kuranda in the early 1880s, and also near Mareeba in 1881.

This led to the notorious Speewah massacre in 1890 where John Atherton took revenge on the Djubagay by sending in native troopers to avenge the killing of a bullock.

[citation needed] In 2004, Justice Jeffrey Spender, a Federal Court judge, in analysing Djabugay land claims in terms of Australian legislation regarding native title, touched on the concept of bulurru and affirmed that for them the geomorphic features of the area affirm the truth of the laws instituted by the dreamtime, and are taken as tangible proof of bulurru and the totemic beings in Djabugay country.