Budibella

Budibella is the country’s most easterly province and its second-largest by population. A corruption of the Goarra term “buida ballua” meaning “beside the ocean”, Budibella was chosen in a province-wide 1910 referendum to replace its original name of East Jarraban. Slightly over half the population lives in its capital city, Bracanna.

The province’s first inhabitants were the Goarra people, along with small populations of Wauroppa in the far-west. Europeans arrived in 1819 and settled areas surrounding Tiverton, Port Ellesmere and Royston, where fertile land and ample fish stocks enabled many to live prosperously. Bracanna and the south-east was also home to a medium-sized whaling industry until overfishing depleted local whale populations, forcing stations to progressively close during the 1870s and 1880s. Dutch settlement, meanwhile, predominated in the province’s south, where Koilarra (originally known as Bosscherkaap) and Apeldorn were founded as resupply ports for ships travelling to Indonesia. Britain granted these as concessions to the Netherlands in 1843, before they were returned in 1879.

Budibella’s climate varies between subtropical in the far north and oceanic in the south. Its interior is relatively dry and used heavily for grain and dairy farming, whilst coastal regions typically feature large tracts of bushland. The foothills of the Arrow Mountains are the nation’s third-largest wine producer after the Richmond and New Haarlem regions in neighbouring Diamantina. Dry summer conditions often lead to bushfires, the most notable and destructive of which was Blazing Monday in January 2005. The province additionally contains two of Jarraban’s three largest volcanoes in Kuallador and the Yogara supervolcano.