[1] Tom Petrie, son of one of the founding families of the Brisbane area settlements, mixed freely with the Turrbal, and mastered the language and the contiguous dialects from an early age.
[7] Meanjin (also Meeanjin, Mianjin) is a Turrbal/Yuggera word whose various etymologies suggest a meaning of "spike place" or "tulip wood".
[13] At the time of European settlement, the Turrbal comprised local groups each of which had a "head man" and a specific territory.
For instance, a man could own a bonyi (Araucaria bidwilli) tree, and a woman a minti (Banksia amula), dulandella (Persoonia Sp.
[18][c] The explorer John Oxley, on first sighting the Turrbal in 1824, called them "about the strongest and best-made muscular men I have seen in any country".
Turrbal people would go to Mount Coot-tha to collect honey (ku-ta) from the bees there; it is the place of the honey-bee dreaming.
[22] The Turrbal exploited a large range of local species of animals and insects as part of their daily cuisine.
The Turrbal would occasionally hunt marine animals, such as dugongs (yangon), porpoises (talobilla), tailor fish (punba), and mullet (andakal).
[37] Descendants of both the Turrbal and the Jagera (Yugara) consider themselves traditional custodians of the land over which much of Brisbane is built.
In January 2015, Justice Christopher Jessup for the Federal Court of Australia, in Sandy on behalf of the Yugara People v State of Queensland (No 2), rejected the claims on the basis that under traditional law, which was now lacking, none of the claimants would be considered to have such a land right.