A documentary history of the Illawarra & South Coast Aborigines 1770-1850 : including a chronological bibliography 1770-1990 (2025)

OCR

Aboriginal Education Unit
The;lHJniversigty‘—gof Wollongong

1770 -[...]

Individual manuscripts and images remain the property of the National Library of Australia, the
Archives Office of New South Wales, the Mitchell Library, the lllawarra Historical Society, and the
Aboriginal Education Unit and University Archives[...]ing or otherwise, without written permission from the author

Page layout by Lynne Hutton; print[...]

This document is dedicated to the individual Koori families who made up the
lllawarra and South Coast nation, whose st[...]

The University of Wollongong

Dreamingstories.........................i|

1770

Captain Cook and the Endeavour
James Cook's Log .

Joseph Banks[...]

Conflict at Jervis Bay

1806
Wreck of the George at Twofold Bay
Sealers Kill Natives at Two[...]oung Bundle

1810

Governor Macquarie’s Tour of the Cowpastures

1811

Governor Macquarie at J[...]

1813

Wrecks of the Mercury and Endeavour at Shoalhaven
1814

Natives[...]ost at Shoalhaven . . . .
Fears for George Wood's Party at Shoalhaven
Continuing Search for George Wood’s Party .
Sealers and Aborigines Clash near Twofold Bay[...]Killed at Nepean . . . .
Charles Throsby Defends the Aborigine
Governor Macquarie's Punitive Expeditio[...]t. Dawe’s Report . . . . . .

Macquarie Recalls the Expeditions

Governor Macquarie’s Procla[...]

1829

Foxhound sinks off Coalcliff
1830

The Battle of Fairy Meadow .

The Execution of Broger . . . . . . . .
Alexander Berry's Account of the Murder
Lt. Breton’s Account of the Murder

W.R. Govett in lllawarra .

Robert[...]

1832

Overland to Illawarra . . . . . . . . . . .
Massacre at Murra Marang - the Joseph Berryman Case
Sequence of Events .
Stateme[...]origines
Summary of Blankets Issued to Aborigines
The Paulsgrove Diary . . . . . .

1834

The Paulsgrove Diary . . .

Search for a missing Mail[...]182
183
183
183

184
184
185
185
186
187
187
191
192
193
194
195
195
196
197

197
197
197
198[...]

1841

The Wreck of the Rover at Broulee .
John Skinner Prout, art[...]

1843

Census of Maneroo a[...]a Aborigines

1846

AMoruyaVocabulary . . . . . .
The McCattrey Family at Kangaroo Valley

1847
Census[...]. .
J.P. Townsend at Ulladulla

1850
Terara

1851
The Murder of Fisherman
Burial at the Blowhole

Aborigines of the Berrimai District '

270
271
274

275
276
277
278

278

278
281
281
282
284
285
286
287
289
290
292
293

294
295

296

297
298
298

298

298
298
299

Doctor Ellis

King Mickey & the Minamurra Camp

Death of Mongo Mongo

An Aboriginal Birth . . . .
Discovery of an Aboriginal Body
The Death of Captain Brooks

Blacks Blanket Day

Blac[...]riginal Birth

An lllawarra Vocabulary

Woonona - The Last of the Tribe
An Eden Vocabulary

1852

1854

1855[...]

1871
The Blacks of Shoalhaven . .
Reminiscences by Alexand[...]318

. 320

321
321

. 322

. 323

324
324

324

I 326

333

I 334

335

336
336

. 336

337

. 337

338

Canoes at Lake lllawarra . . .
Willy the Cripple — Aboriginal Artist
Aborigines P[...]

Aborigines Protection Board

The Egg Feast of Wagonga
Aborigines Protection Board[...]ilton-UlladullaAborigines
Aboriginal Place Names

The Bunan Ceremony

Archibald Campbell Papers

A Corr[...]ginal Art Galley

Death of Billy Bothong

1891

1892

1893

1896

1897

1898

1899

1900

1901[...]

Foundation of Roseby Park R[...]es

Ulladulla in 1828

Reminiscences of Moruya in the 1830s
Reminiscences by Old Pioneer
King Hooka . .[...]say Reminiscences

1906

1907

1908

1909

1914

1920

1923

1925

1929

1930

1931

1934

. 370

. 371

. 371

.[...]

Stone Arrangement at Nowra

Midden Artefacts

The ‘Windang’ Axe

Mount Keira Rock Art

Dapto

C[...]4

. 384

385

388

. 388
. 388

. 389

289

389

I 390
. 392

Rock Shelter and Midden Studies
Bh[...]969

1971

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

. 392

. 395

. 397

. 399
. 399
. 399

. 400
.[...]

1979
When the sky fell down....
Wreck Bay Community

1980
lllaw[...]chaeological Surveys

1983
Archaeological Surveys
The Five Forests Survey

1984
Aboriginal Reserves of lllawarra and the South Coast
ArchaeologicalSurveys . . . . . . .[...]Mumbulla Mountain

. 407
. 408

409
409

410
410

I 410

411

. 412
. 413

. 414
. 416

416

I 417

417
418

. 418
. 419
. 419

420
421
4[...]

The following documentary history assembled by Michae[...]comprehensive reference for further inquiry into the recent local history of
lllawarra and South Coast[...]with
Aboriginal people and organisations such as the Wollongong Aboriginal Education
Consultative Group (AECG). As such, the book is essentally an example of genuine
collabor[...]riginal and non-Aboriginal
perspectives. Overall, the publication provides an important beginning, a
sp[...]ther collaborative efforts between historians and the
original custodians of knowledge in the region.

Students and teachers who have attempted[...]tells a story in and through existing documents. The
documents stand alone, without unnecessary commen[...]history. While, as all students of history know, the story of contact between
Aboriginal and non-Abori[...]s nonetheless opportunity here for us to
confront the past, consider and understand the facts as they are recorded, and act so
as to eradicate dispossession, prejudice, and injustice from the future.

The author's introduction shows clearly that the nature of the investigation
significantly changed his own perceptions of the recent history of the region. In and
of itself, the process of collecting and collating such data provides a basis for
challenging assumptions of the present. As primary source material, these
documents hold potential to significantly influence the perceptions of all readers.
Comprehensive (regional) Australian histories of the future ought not be written
without substantive r[...]ished or
disclosed. They have remained as part of the hidden or tacit history of the lllawarra
and South Coast.

Michael Organ is well known in the region as both a meticulous and resourceful
histo[...]people who,
as Carol Speechley points out, carry the history of the region in their ''...long-
suffering memories".

in due course, as I am sure most readers will agree, Aboriginal Australian heritage
will become part of the heritage of all people who feel strong connection[...]luded in this work will surely promote this end.

The University of Wollongong
September,1990 ARTHUR SMITH

An Aboriginal Perspective

The history of the lllawarra and South Coast Aborigines has, to a si[...]ed
or overlooked by standard history texts during the past 202 years. The only sources available that
provide clear insight into the Koori history of the region are the long-suffering memories of senior
Aboriginal people within the community who have had this knowledge passed down[...]tion. Unfortunately most people have no access to the Koori
keepers of knowledge and have to rely on do[...]n other areas of New South Wales. We know
some of the names of the Koories who fought for survival on their own term[...]s and non-Koories, have little or no knowledge of the struggles,
hardships and victories of the Koori people who originally inhabited this region[...]Koori history, however it does shed some light on
the harsh life that coastal Koories had to endure and[...]it will promote an understanding and insight into the dynamic Aboriginal
culture of the New South Wales South Coast. In providing a much needed resource for students
and teachers in the region it may provide a springboard to further collaborative inquiry. Such
knowledge should help to promote the wider communities’ understanding of the descendants of
the clans and individuals mentioned who continue to dwell on the South Coast; our homeland.

Carolspeechly
Aboriginal Community Liaison Officer
Aboriginal Education Unit

The University of Wollongong

13September1990

Acknowledgements

The inspiration for this study arose from a discussion between the compiler and Joe and lnga
Davis early in 1989, wherein we all queried the lack of primary source information - archaeological,
cultural, and historical - readily available on the Aborigines of lllawarra and the South Coast
(especially prior to 1900), and the almost total absence from regional and local histories of
information regarding the original inhabitants of this part of Australia.

We suspected the commonly held myth that there were no substantial records available on the
local Aboriginal people to be wrong. This led to a questioning of the standard white histories of
lllawarra and Australia, with their common omissions in regards to the indigenous natives.

If we were to believe the history books, it was almost as though the Aborigines never existed, and
the continent had no real history or civilization prior to 1770. Furthermore, it was intimated that the
local people played a very minor role in the development of present-day Australia.

The following compilation of documents and references is the result of the subsequent search for
accounts of the original Aboriginal inhabitants of lllawarra and the South Coast. It attempts to
address the omissions of previous historians and provide a re[...]uth Coast history in particular.

To Joe and Inga I say thank you for the initial inspiration and continued interest and
encouragement offered throughout the period of compilation of this work.

Secondly, I would like to express my sincere thanks to archaeologist Caryll Sefton, who assisted in
the early stages by providing access to a number of o[...]e had uncovered during
her many years of study of the prehistory of the local Aboriginal people. Her continued enthusiasm[...]ect and valuable advice was much appreciated.

To the staff of the Archives Office of New South Wales, the Mitchell Library, Sydney, and the
Wollongong Reference Library, all of whom assisted with the task of locating relevant archival
material and newspaper articles, I also owe much appreciation; and to those institutions, a deal of
thanks for permission to reproduce the items included in this work. Also to the numerous workers
who over the years have translated and published many of the documents reproduced over the
following pages I pay tribute.

Others who directly assisted in the compilation of this work by providing information[...]and my wife Jeanette who typed
a large section of the work.

Finally I would like to thank the Aboriginal Education Unit, Wollongong University, and the lllawarra
Historical Society for support in the publication of this work.

To all I say thank you.

Michael Organ
1 November199O

INTRODUCTION

Preamble

The following work is not a history of the Aboriginal people of lllawarra and the South Coast of New
South Wales. It is primarily a compilation of documents describing early (i.e. 1770-1850)
encounters between Europeans and the Aborigines of coastal south-eastern New South Wales -
specifically from the lllawarra and South Coast regions. It is interspe[...]hronological bibliography of material relevant to the region, covering the aforementioned period
(1770-1850) and also carrying on from 1850 to the present day (1990).

Copies of documents, letters, and publications of significance to Aboriginal studies of the area —
many of which initially appeared prior t[...]produced in
full where possible, and indicated in the Table of Contents. Unfortunately many significant[...]liographic references may also be located through the index.

The whole work is presented in a documentary format,[...]ture studies. This arrangement was adopted due to the abundance of material located and the
absence of a prior definitive historical and sociological text on the lllawarra Aborigines. It was also
felt that there[...]on of all known historical documents referring to
the lllawarra Aborigines, especially for the period prior to 1850 - many such documents at pre[...]rs that nothing survived, a wealth of material on the local people has been
located. Whilst this compilation does not claim to be the final word, it does attempt to include the
more significant accounts and documents from the period 1770-1850 describing the Aborigines
and their relations with the white invaders.

As new material is constantly being unearthed there is no doubt that in the future further volumes
on this subject will appea[...]work could easily be produced dealing solely with the
history of the lllawarra and South Coast Aborigines during the twentieth century, especially if the
archival records of the Aborigines Protection Board were utilised.

Within this compilation lllawarra and the South Coast is defined (according to the New South
Wales electoral boundaries of 1900 - re[...]that part of southern New South Wales
bounded by the Royal National Park to the north; to the west by the towns of Appin and Berrima;
to the south by Twofold Bay and the Victorian border; and to the east by the coastline abutting the
Pacific Ocean. The central portion of this large area comprised the domain of the Aboriginal people
who once spoke the languages now designated as Thurrawal, Dhurga, an[...]for language subdivisions based on Eades, 1976).

The references contained herein mainly deal with the Aboriginal people of lllawarra (i.e. along the
coast from Stanwell Park in the north to Nowra and the Shoalhaven River in the south, and west to
the lllawarra Escarpment), for it is these people who have been largely neglected in recent
studies.

The compilation also refers to groups from the Appin and Southern Tablelands area — as far west as
Camden, Berrima and Goulburn - and the far South Coast region from Jervis Bay to[...]

and towards the Victorian border. All were neighbors and intimate associates of the central
Illawarra Aborigines, and all occupiers of the land for possibly 40,000 years prior to the white
invasion in 1788.

Items from areas outside or abutting upon the above noted boundaries - such as the Burragorang
Valley and Cowpastures to the west, and Port Hacking and Botany Bay to the north - are included
when considered relevant by the compiler.

Though the focus of this investigation is upon the period of initial contact between Aborigines and
Europeans along the South Coast between 1788-1850, the interspersed bibliography also points to
references covering both the pre- and post-contact periods, up until the present day.

It should be noted that the post 1850 material within this compilation is not as comprehensively
covered as is the earlier period, wherein all relevant material has[...]0 material is simply cited in most instances.

By the 1850s the original local inhabitants / tribes of central an[...]e either
destroyed, decimated, or dispersed along the coastline to the north and south, and even west
inland. During the next 50 years Aborigines from other areas of New South Wales and Victoria
settled in the district and some locals left (e.g. King Mickey,[...]rom Victoria settled
at Roseby Park around 1907). The full revelation of these movements will be left to another worker,
for their complexities are beyond the scope of this compilation.

As interest by both w[...]s to digest this primary source material, and use the associated bibliography to make
their own interpretations when considering aspects of the cultures of the Illawarra and South Coast
Aborigines, and the effects of the white invasion upon the race.

Many questions still remain unanswered wit[...]heir lifestyle prior to 1770, and their fate
over the following 200 years. Whilst the archaeological investigations of workers such as[...]dra Bowdler and Caryll Sefton will help delineate the prehistory (i.e. pre European
history) of the local people, it is within the documents reproduced over the following pages that the
story of the first century of white settlement and its effects upon the local people is partially
revealed. Unfortunately we will never really know what life was like for the Aborigines of Illawarra
prior to their encountering white men, nor the full complexity of their culture at the time.

A comprehensive history of the Aborigines of Illawarra since 1788 had not been included in any of
the conventional local histories so far written by white Australians. in such works the history and
culture of the original inhabitants of Illawarra usually only wa[...]rehensive history. Only in very recent years have the local Aborigines been
included in regional studie[...]ion long being available both from descendants of the local people,
and in obscure and difficult to obt[...]l and ethnographic reports and articles.

Just as the important role of the convict in settling Australia was until quite recently excluded from
the standard histories, so also were the stories of the Aboriginal discovery and settlement of
Australia[...]ears ago.

Captain Cook is still widely viewed as the ‘discoverer’ of eastern Australia, and the Aborigines, with
their long history of set[...]

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The truth of the matter is that the role of Europeans in the conquest of the Australian Aborigines
was long considered too sha[...]economic developments within white society. Both the
convicts and the Aborigines were only ever mentioned in passing and in generalised terms.

The reasons for these omissions will become obvious t[...]dent of
black—white relations in Australia over the past 200 years, for they reflect the darker side of this
country's history, with wides[...]ignorance of Aboriginal cultures, common amongst the introduced white population.

The fact that the Aborigines had a completely different concept of history from the Europeans;
possessed no written records of their[...]omprehension of their civilization difficult from the outset, especially when the
great majority of whites did not botherto pursue[...]occurred throughout Australia since 1788 -
we see the decimating diseases introduced by the first convicts and settlers; dispossession of
Abo[...]assimilation with no
compensation right up until the present day.

We see that even benign benevolence[...]local individuals (e.g. Alexander Berry)
towards the Aborigines along the South Coast during the nineteenth century ultimately resulted in
their d[...]overnments in particular,
never really understood the Aboriginal people nor came to grips with the complexities of their
civilization. It was always[...]ay most Australians look with horror upon many of the practices which were considered so
enlightened an[...]neteenth century Europeans in their dealings with
the original Australians - these included the removal of children from families; the creation of
special camps and reserves (the first concentration camps); the alienation of traditional lands; the
rejection of all aspects of Aboriginal culture and religion; and the wholesale slaughter in the name
of ‘putting the poor savage out of his misery’ (c.f. Reynolds, 1982). All such practices were
presented under the auspices of colonisation, civilization, Christian[...]merely masking greed, racism, and inhumanity.

In the history of white and black relations in Australia, and lllawarra, we can find analogies to the
public racism exercised in South Africa and south[...]as those carried out by Hitler's Nazi troops and the Americans at Me Lai in Vietnam.
Circumstances may differ, but the reality was just as brutal for the victims of war.

The truth of this condemnation is revealed by material contained within this compilation. It is
unfortunate that the documents reproduced over the following pages often show the most evil side
of the so-called pioneers of this land, but such was reality, for compassion and humanity were the
exception when relations with the Australian Aborigines were concerned.

Some of the incidents related over the following pages are sickening and shameful, and it is no
wonder that until now the meagre details have not been presented as part and parcel of the true
history of Australia, but have remained hidd[...]d learned historians more interested in enhancing the myth of the valiant explorer and
pioneer settler ‘taming’ the land, than in exposing the realities and harsh inhumanity of conquest
following the invasion of 1788.

For example, this study inadvertantly details the undeclared war waged between Europeans and
the Aborigines of New South Wales from 1788 to about[...]nitive expeditions of 1816 in which Aborigines to the west and south of Sydney (around Camden
an[...]

The significance of this campaign is largely unrecognized by white historians and the public at
large, yet such an omission from the white history of Australia is understandable - th[...]eritage, and it will surely take many more before the rather unpalatable realities
concerning the first contacts with the Aborigines between 1788-1850, and the subsequent
slaughters, abuses, and disregard at the hands of the white settlers, are exposed and accepted.

The fact is — and it is clearly revealed in this study - the Aborigines did not willingly submit to the
white invaders, as is commonly believed by white[...]actually fought long and hard
for their land from the time of the arrival of the First Fleet at Port Jackson in January 1788; during
the years of near extinction around Sydney and along coastal New South Wales after the 1850s;
and throughout this century.

This determi[...]cked by Aborigines at Botany Bay. And later, when the First Fleet sailed into Port Jackson in
January 1788, the natives lined the shore brandishing their spears and repeatedly sho[...].' Perhaps ‘go home‘ would have
been closerto the mark.

Fortunately for the English, the Aborigines did not fight a traditional European c[...]ears. Of course such a campaign was easily won by the British, with
their superior firepower, massed armed regiments, and years of experience in battle.

The British were not simply given their vast empire — they attained it through bloody conquest and
the decimation of native peoples.

Initially the Aborigines who suffered at the hands of the whitemen and their muskets retaliated. This
inclu[...]Bathurst
around1820.

They took savage revenge on the white settlers who had killed members of their fa[...]nds. However this retaliation quickly resulted in the large-scale decimation
of their people as a result of indiscriminant reprisals by the whites, and caused the natives to
retreat in orderto ensure the survival of their race, such was the threat. They soon realized that the
spear was no match for the gun.

Australia was not an uninhabited continent[...]. This denial of Aboriginal right of
ownership to the land was the most heinous crime perpetrated by the British in their settlement of
Australia. All subsequent abuses of the Aborigines spring from this initial denial and greed on the
part of the British - a process which is still being perpetrated to this day (refer H.Reynolds, The Law
and the Land, 1987; P.Turbet, The Aborigines of the Sydney District before 1788, Sydney, 1989).

As the Catholic Bishop J.B. Polding pointed out to John[...]parliamentary Select Committee) when he asked of the Australian Aborigines ‘Do you think they
have such an idea of the value of land, as to lead them to view its settle[...]of
aggression?’, he unhesitatingly replied :

'I am convinced of it, and I think that is the root of the evil.’

Unfortunately no notice was taken of Po[...]timony and no treaty was ever signed to
formalise the annexation of Australia, unlike events in New Zealand. Such was the condescension
with which the Aborigines were held at the time that none was considered necessary, so
successful had been the British invasion of New South Wales.

Following thethe far South Coast of New South Wales, and the
rich Southern Tablelands — especially after the arrival of the expansionist Governor Macquarie in
1810 - saw conflict develop with the local Aborigines along the expanding frontiers, though such
conflict had existed from as early as 1788 (refer E.Wilmot, Pemulwuy - The Rainbow Warrior, 1987).

The circumstances of the conflict along any Australian frontier between natives and the white
invader were usually played out as follows:[...]r adventurers (who were
usually treated kindly by the local natives, and often assisted on their way), itinerant
lawless whitemen and convicts would move onto the traditional lands of the Aborigines to
cut cedar, graze sheep and cattle,[...]er was abundant -
which also happened to be where the Aborigines traditionally camped and were often
considered sacred sites.

The Aborigines would infl-
ially protest - wherein they would be forced away by the power of the gun and/or
slaughtered - or accept the strangers and gladly share their resources. Perhaps they
would move on for a couple of months, hoping the Europeans and their strange animals
would be gone when they returned. Unfortunately the white people stayed, and when the
natives returned they either came into conflict with the whites or tried to co-exist. The
Europeans now considered the land theirs alone, and would erect fences and ins[...]guard dogs to keep away all strangers, including the local Aborigines. Sharing
crops with the natives was not considered a moral or social duty.

The Europeans’ farming and grazing practices resulted in the destruction of traditional
Aboriginal food suppli[...]native animals and birds, were frightened away by the cattle and sheep, and hunted by the
Europeans with their guns and dogs; native grasse[...]ograms were
carried out by settlers and convicts. The often scarce water holes and creeks, supplying
fi[...]ter, were polluted by man and beast, or dried up. The landscape became
scared with the effects of erosion and incompetent farming practices.

The land which the Aborigines had nurtured and revered for thousands[...]nal environment in usually a short space of time,
the Aborigines were placed in dire straits. Their very survival was threatened. The only
course of action was to obtain food from those new sources introduced by the whites,
including wheat, corn, bread, meat, sugar, tea, milk, etc. As the whites would not freely
supply these provisions, the natives were forced to ‘steal’ them (at least that is how the
settlers saw the situation) appropriating crops, and occasionally killing sheep and cattle.
As the Aborigines were traditionally a hunter-gatherer s[...]ay-to-day survival only.

This ‘violation’ of the settler’s property was seen as the most dastardly crime - terms such
as 'depredations’ and ‘Aboriginal atrocities’ were brandished in the media when crops
were plundered. Their raids usually resulted in violent retaliation by the whites.

A case is known in Queensland where one man during the 1840s killed 150 natives
following the taking of one of his bulls, and in lllawarra in 1[...]st merely collecting corn from a field!

Such was the attitude of the early white settlers towards the Aborigines that they did not

consider they owed them any compensation for the taking of their land and livelihood, and
showed great offence if the natives demanded such payment. As the Aborigines
considered the land to belong to the people, and not to any individual, they never rea[...]land title deed
meant nothing to them.

* Against the overwhelming power of the white man's musket, poison, smallpox, influenza,
venereal diseases, sheer weight of numbers, the inequitable British law, and the often
callous barbarity of white settlers, the Aborigines’ struggle to maintain their traditio[...]their land quickly turned into a loosing battle.

The above scenario occurred in all areas of Australia[...]settlement, including
within lllawarra and along the South Coast of New South Wales (refer H.Reyno|ds, The Other Side
of the Frontier, 1982, and Frontier, 1987). The ultimate result was the mass destruction and/or silent
assimilation of the Aboriginal people of coastal and inland New South Wales during the first half of
the nineteenth century. This once proud, populous, an[...]degradation often followed. It will forever be to the immense shame of white
Australia that these native people were almost entirely wiped out along the east coast of Australia
in such a short space of time.

The arrival in Australia during the 1860s of Charles Dam/in’s theories of social evolution - a form of
scientific racism - which placed the Australian Aborigines at the foot of the evolutionary ladder, just
above the apes and monkeys, and the subsequent catch-cry of ‘survival of the fittest’, was to
further remove any widespread feelings of guilt from the consciences of the white conquerors for
another hundred years.

Extreme interpretations of evolutionary theory suggested that the destruction of the Aboriginal
peoples of Australia was inevitable, as though an act of God, and the whites were merely carrying
out a divine plan! After all, they were only ‘miserable savages’, as the public was frequently
informed.

The local churches enhanced the problem by in some cases accepting these views and generally
showing more concern for the welfare of South Seas islanders than the unfortunate natives in their
own backyards. Their patronising of the local people, lack of consideration for Aborigina[...]oncepts, and support of Government bodies such as the Aborigines Protection Board, increased
the problems the local people faced in gaining equality and justic[...]try. It was
easy for whites to plead ignorance of the plight of the original Australians.

Theories of racial superio[...]ite over black - are only now being questioned by the general
public, though they are still widely held and expressed, continuing to place the Aboriginal people in
a racially inferior position within Australia. It is only by a general recognition of the equality of all
races on the part of every Australian that this nation will come of age, and the burden of the
Aboriginal people will be eased.

A reading of the material contained in this study makes obvious the richness of Australian
Aboriginal cultures, and the gross injustices committed upon the natives of Australia since 1788.
The so-called white version of Australia's history -[...]rigines, who were usually repaid this kindness by the dispossession of their land and
the abuse of their people.

This study also reveals the oven/vhelming arrogance, injustice, bias, misunderstanding, and
inequity shown by the majority of the original European writers of the period 1788-1850 towards
the Aboriginal race. The first few generations of white Australians were t[...]r
own survival and empire building to worry about the local Aborigines.

Australia therefore has much to mourn in the swift passing of such a large proportion of the original
Aboriginal population, estimated to have[...]lture and heritage offered / still offers much to the white
invaders, however few have shared in its riches. With the world-wide environmental crises of the
1980s looming so large in the public mind, white Australians are only now starting to appreciate the
benefits if the so-called ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ lifestyle of the Australian Aboriginal people in the
years prior to 1788 - a people at one with the land, unbound by racial or social discrimination;
living a life where no man was greater than any other, and the resources of the land were there to
be used on a daily basis, for survival only, and to be constantly renewed. The original greenies.

Of course such an idyllic sce[...]ere is nevertheless a great deal of
truth in it.

The white ethic which rated people according to their accumulation of property and wealth, and
promoted the development of internal class structures, was foreign to the Aboriginal way of life,
and for this reason the indigenous Australians were viewed with scorn. Such arrogance was
especially common amongst the British who established the penal colony known as ‘Botany Bay’
in 1788. English civilization was rife with class distinction at the time, and those in Australia
naturally tried to impose their values upon the Aborigines.

Whilst the Aborigines were not an idyllic race - they led a[...]eir basic lifestyle and its supposed harmony with the land becomes more
attractive day by day to Australians questioning both the morals and pace of modern society and
its effect upon the individual and the environment.

When the Europeans tried to ‘civilize’ the Aborigines in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
they were unsuccessful — not because (as was generally reported) the Aborigines were too lazy
and primitive to ‘appreciate’ and accept western culture, but because the Aborigines, after
studying the European way of life, made the conscious decision to reject it. After all, they[...].’
They had a security, a sense of belonging to the land, which Europeans could never appreciate.
The only way the Aborigines could be brought to task was by conquest, and the destruction of
their traditional society via the introduction of diseases and vices such as alcohol and drugs.

Such an idea - the spurning of the opportunity to adopt the so-called superior British culture, with
its bene[...]ustice — could never
be accepted as rational by the white settlers in the Colony, who looked on the Aborigines as the
bottom rung of a social hierarchy comprising ruling officials and military at the top, followed by free
settlers, ex-convicts and the native born, and the convicts. The Aborigines had such a lowly status
in Australian[...]lly considered citizens of this country and given the
right to vote until 1967!

Perhaps the best summary account of the fate of the Australian Aborigines during the first 50 years
of white settlement which this compiler has read is to be found in a letter published in the Sydney
Gazeffeof 18 February 1841. It was written by an anonymous ‘T.B. - A Bushman’ in a hut by the
Snowy Mountains on 20 July 1840, and describes hi[...]letter,
reproduced below, reveals many aspects of the local Aboriginal culture, its destmction, and the
prevalentwhite attitudes.

The Bushman's account is clearly erroneous in some st[...]ons of local
culture - especially with regards to the Aborigines’ religious beliefs, which had[...]

....Much has been written and spoken of the blacks or aborigines of New Holland; they have been
condemned by one party, unjustly I must say, as possessing all the vices and depravity of our own
worst nature, together with the malignity of fiends; and by another as being the most inoffensive
and virtuous; for my own part I must say that neither party are correct in their general averments.

it must[...]d
indeed professing no belief in, a future state; the only idea they have, but which I rather suspect
they must have derived from the "whites," relative to another state, is the constant dread they are in
of an evil spirit whic[...]on their dying they will, after
a period, revisit the earth as white men; or, as one of them explained[...]They have a certain ceremony when a lad attains the age of fourteen, or thereabout, that they
throw a[...]which some assert to be a religious rite, though I am
inclined to think otherwise, but as they stric[...]om this ceremony it is
almost impossible to state the particulars; suffice it to say that the tribe musters its whole strength,
when they select all the lads on whom the operation has not been performed, these they take[...]ing settled, one youth after another is taken and the front
tooth of the upper jaw extracted; the youths remain on the place for a certain number of days,
when they are introduced to the tribe as warriors at a grand corrobera held on the occasion. The
gins are not allowed to be present when the teeth are extracted; the mothers of the lads keep at
some distance, and during all the period the operation is going on they carry in their hands a[...]ich on no account they allow to be extinguished.

The blacks have no form of government whatever; they obey no chief (though the whites have
dubbed no inconsiderable number with the titles of chief; in fact "they are all chiefs," as the
Mountain Minstrel used to say of the M’Colls) except any of their number who may be[...], who has generally a species of authority during the
time they are on their fighting expeditions; when the occasion that called for it has passed over,
"eve[...]person of
his own tribe, a day is set apart when the criminal is subjected to the ordeal of the "dewin" or the
spear. He is made to stand at a spear’s throw from the camp, armed only with a shield, when a
number of[...]il or shield. If he is fortunate enough to escape the shower of missiles that is
thus continued for nearly an hour to be thrown at him, he is released amidst the shoutings of his
countrymen, no one daring to mol[...]r this. Sometimes it happens, though rarely, that the
criminal falls under the number of spears darted at him; indeed it is most surprising how anyone
could escape from such a trial, but the address displayed by some of these fellows in eva[...]They sometimes quarrel amongst themselves about the gins, but this seldom leads to any result,
being settled by the grey-beards of the tribe, whose fiat is binding, unless it is with an adverse tribe;
this, and the disputes about their hunting grounds, are the principal and indeed only causes of war,
if their[...]dignified with such a term. Polygamy is allowed.

The all-engrossing object that affects these savages is the acquiring the means of subsistence,
which engages all their tho[...]eace and war; this leads to a distinction between the
blacks of the sea coast and those of the interior. The former live by the canoe, the latter by
climbing trees; as the staple food of the one is fish, and of the other grubs and oppossums, which
are only found by scaling the trees.

Revenge with them, as with most other savages, is the ruling passion, combined as it is with
ext[...]

:3 Iallt/nrnnarari
\4 u....., ,,...,,....u...

The most striking characteristic that attaches to the[...]under fatigue
and want; a capability of enduring the extreme of summer heat, without complaining; and of
traversing in the depth of winter, which in many parts of the colony is as severe as in England -
forests and p[...]nd snow, without shoes or any other covering than the
oppossum cloak, which serves for clothing by nigh[...]g and fighting expeditions, be classed as lazy in the extreme.
Yet it must be acknowledged in their beh[...]amusement that undoubtedly has its attractions.

The above relates to those blacks who are settled within the Colony; those in the "far" interior
beyond the located bounds I have had little or no intercourse with, and it would avail little unless
acquainted with their language, the mode of living being nearly alike in all.

That the aborigines have been loosers instead of gainers by the settlement of the whites amongst
them is beyond dispute; they have contracted if not all the vices of the Europeans, at least many of
them, and none of their virtues. From their mixing with only the basest of mankind, what other can
be expected tha[...]ated?

instead of being even partially civilized, the only advantages bestowed on them by their brethren
of the white skin, is the rendering their hunting grounds useless to them,[...]nd of having entailed on them and their
offspring the most loathsome diseases; this description does no[...]generally speaking, it is but too accurate. Where the blacks have had little
or no intercourse with whi[...]utalized
their brethren that have been more under the contaminating influence of the Europeans; they have
been accused of murder, and the destruction of the property of the settlers; this to a very limited
extent I admit, though it is a matter of glaring notoriety, that ten blacks are murdered for one white;
this is the case exclusive of those killed in self—defence, and which are studiously kept from the
knowledge of the authorities.

if space permitted me I could dwell much longer on this subject, and instance where the blacks
have been shot and slaughtered wholesale — and by whom do you suppose?

By the felons [convicts] of New South Wales?

No such th[...]grade - persons who should have known better.

is the slaughter of a few head of cattle a sufficient re[...]nction in shooting a black than a kangaroo.

That the blacks from sheer necessity are driven to spear some of the settlers’ cattle, is true; yet to
the candid reader this will be a matter of no surprise, when he recollects that the savage considers
the white man as the wrongful possessor of his country, and that inste[...]om, fatal experience has taught him that wherever the print of the European appears, he

Which of these evils should he choose?

The kangaroo and the emu forsake the plains and the forests whenever the herds and flocks break
ground. I was one day asked by a native of the Maneroo country for something to eat; at the same
time remarking with a most pitiful expressio[...]ay. Poor
fellow, black fellow, now by

These are the very words. Let but one consider that in spite of all the philanthrophy of England, the
natives of New Holland instead of being either ci[...]tate than when this vast continent was a blank
on the world's map; it is absurd to suppose that miracles can be wrought, and that the untamed
savage should become all at once versed in the knowledge of the arts of civilized men; no, that
cannot be done, b[...]ople as Britons; but what has been done to better
the condition of these children of nature? Absolutely[...]pacity in them to receive
instruction. As regards the former assertion, why such is always the case with savage tribes. What
were the ancestors of polished Englishmen previous to the Roman invasion? in a state of society
little removed from that of the New Hollander.

As to the latter, I deny that there is any such mental incapacity as[...]coming
in time, intelligent and useful members of the community. This is apparent to any one who has had
opportunities of observing the shrewdness and natural quickness of observation they possess in a
high degree. Where the experiment has been tried to educate any of them,[...]if more were done and less said, about
bettering the condition of these miserable remnants of tribes whose lands are now occupied by the
settlers; these at least have claims that admit of no denial.

In my next I shall allude to those futile attempts that have been made by the Government to
ameliorate their condition in the establishment of a Protectorate - one of the rankest pieces of
jobbery that even a corrupt and[...]l working by this tribe of
harpies, who fatten on the public money, you would be little astonished; they scarcely ever stir
from the towns, and if perchance they are half a day in the bush, why the exploit is paraded
through the columns of the Colonial press. If any journalist should have the spirit to arraign the
carelessness and inactivity of the protectors, and should say that something ought to be done for
the aborigines - he only brings on his own head a sho[...]enemy to his
countrymen, forsooth, because he has the moral stamina to throw in a few sentences to point out
the degraded condition of the unfortunate natives. And also because he ventured to say that the
Protectors of the blacks of New Holland might as well be the protectors of the Esquimaux, for all
the good they do; it would be well if this sys[...]

The Fate of the Illawarra Aborigines

it may be appropriate at this point to briefly discuss the fate of the local people during the period
1788-1850, based on the documents reproduced over the following pages, forthe story revealed in
this co[...]to reappraise many commonly held views regarding the history of
Illawarra in general, and that of its original Aboriginal inhabitants.

As previously noted, the impetus for this compilation arose out of occasio[...]ears by local Illawarra historians and members of the community, such
as:

Who were the original Aboriginal inhabitants of Illawarra?

Wh[...]we know of their culture and tradition?

What was the fate of their descendants?

Satisfactory answers[...]hat a wealth of such material
exists, and perhaps the answers may be found (or indicated) amongst the documents reproduced
over the following pages.

It goes without saying that the local people were decimated as a result of the white invasion. in
attempting to explain their demise and answer some of the above questions, the compiler would
suggest the following causes:

* A large number of Illawarra Aborigines succumbed to disease introduced by the white
settlers shortly after 1788. Smallpox and influenza were the most devastating, with
individual epidemics wiping out large percentages (?greater than 50% at a time) of the
population.

‘ Some Aborigines left the district for more isolated areas of the country to the west or south
to avoid conflict with white settle[...]lways
difficult as they were seen as intruders by the neighbouring tribes, and their ties to
traditiona[...]hem out would be analogous to driving a
family of the 1980s from their comfortable brick home onto the street - the effect was
physically and emotionally shattering to the Aboriginal people, and for this reason they did
n[...]aditional homelands. Many were prepared to suffer the humility and
physical degradation of fring[...]

‘ Many tried to adapt to the whiteman’s way of life, becoming part of that community, or

iivinn in camps on the fringes of townships. Many Aboriginal wcrnen married or lived with

white men on the more isolated stations.

Quantifying the rate of decimation of the native population is difficult due to a lack of
c[...]2 we have no specific information, and throughout the remainder of the
nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century census information is sparse. Aborigines
were not included in the numerous musters and census of, for example, 1828[...]ich
havesurvived.

Previous to their inclusion in the Australian census during the 1960s, only the Blanket Returns of
the period 1832-42, and Aborigines Protection Board census from 1882 to the 1960s, are available.
However as this compilation shows, by about 1850 the original Aboriginal tribes of southeastern
Australia had been decimated, corrupted, and dispersed. The Protection Board data is therefore
too late and n[...]sive enough in addressing our questions regarding the original
inhabitants.

What was the population trend in lllawarra from 1788 to 1850?

Noel Butlin (1983) discusses at length the problems associated with approximating the 1788
Aboriginal population of eastern Australia, suggesting that the catastrophic effects of diseases
have been underestimated by previous workers. In answering the above question we need to
remember that the exact effects of early smallpox epidemics (1789 and 1829-30 in Sydney) and
other diseases on the local population can only be guessed at.

According to the Blanket Returns of 1833-44, by the end of the 1830s the Aborigines of central
lllawarra numbered less tha[...]pointed out that not all Aborigines
submitted to the possible humiliation of receiving blankets from white authorities, and these figures
may be low. By the 1860s - whatever the cause - those of northern and central lllawarra were
largely an extinct race, at least in the eyes of the new settlers.

Based upon this information and Bu[...]al lllawarra (Bulli to Kiama) on 26 January 1788. The lower figure is
more plausible if we take into account the local lifestyle and availability of resources.

I[...]population of 500 lost half of its members during the smallpox outbreaks of 1789 and
1829-30, it is easy to see that a figure of 100 individuals surviving by the late 1830s is not so
extraordinary.

During the latter part of the nineteenth century the remnants of the original lllawarra tribal and
family groups were[...]as. Around 1878 a group
headed north to help form the settlement at La Perouse, on the shores of Botany Bay, and their
descendants remain there to this day.

In the eyes of many whites throughout lllawarra the Aborigines were just a memory by 1900, and to
the younger generations of white Australians living in urban areas throughout the country who had
never seen an Aborigine in person, they have only existed in the media, or ‘outback’ throughout
much of this century. The average non-Aboriginal Australian's knowledge of the Aborigines and
their culture is therefore[...]

The European invasion, subtle and relatively bloodless though it may have appeared in the official
records of the British Empire (though bloody in reality), had nevertheless been successful in
bringing the race to near extinction by the mid nineteenth century, especially along the eastern
coast of Australia and in Tasmania. inter[...]to enhance
this view towards ‘extinction’ of the Aboriginal people, with ignorant whites refusing[...]scendants as ‘true’ Aborigines right up until the present day.

The term ‘half-caste’ was used, and is still used[...]ded up living with their Aboriginal families, for the white
community would generally not accept them,[...]ed inter—marriage as a
means of ‘whitening’ the colour of the native Aborigine.

The official ‘assimilation’ policies of the Aborigines Protection Board from 1909 onwards were
nothing less than a continuation of the attempt to completely destroy the indigenous culture, which
action had been pursued since the earliest days of white settlement. Assimilation i[...]izable objective by ignorant non-Aboriginals.

By the turn of the century some whites were beginning to regret the decimation of the native
population of lllawarra and the South Coast, and we have a number of local histor[...]n) compiling as
much information as they could on the local people and aspect of their culture and languages. The
result is a dismal, fragmentary record, with rare[...]ry or aspects of their traditional culture during the period between first contact and 1900. All
surviv[...]e second-hand, with amendments and alterations by the
recorder.

Transcriptions of the native tongue, as in lists of names for local geographical features, are
especially suspect. For example, the local Aboriginal word for ‘Cabbage Palm’ has[...]Turrurwal, Towel, and even Thirroul.

Of images, the few drawings by Mickey of Ulladulla around the 1880s are almost unique for the
region.

It was not until the 1960s that the first major collection of lllawarra and South Coa[...]tape (by Janet Mathews), and not until 1987 that the first collection of
reminiscences by local Aborig[...]ely by that stage much had
been lost forever, and the informants (many of whom were not descended from the original
pre-1788 inhabitants of lllawarra, but came to the region from other parts of the country) only
remembered events this century. Hopefully within the memories of the descendants of the lllawarra
Aborigines aspects of the traditional cultures survive and are yet t[...]

From a reading of the documents cited in this work, we can make the following brief summary
statements regarding the Aboriginal people of Illawarra priorto 1788:

They consisted of a number of family groups who occupied the coastal strip from Bulli and
Stanwell Park in the north, to Shoalhaven and Kangaroo Valley in the south. They were mostly
coastal dwellers — though they also used the resources of the mountain areas to the west of the
escarpment - and lived on a diet of fish (sea, fr[...]1983, 1988).

They made regular excursions out of the district to places such as Appin and Bong Bong, and
occasionally as far as Sydney and the Blue Mountains for special corroborees and initiation
ceremonies.

Most families lived in the open, or within gunyahs or rock shelters, their o[...]one of seeking out an existence day by day, with the men performing specified
hunting duties, and the women responsible for cooking and rearing the children to maturity
(though the males also had input into this latter area). Each family group roamed throughout the
region, with specific areas accepted as their dom[...]Their religious beliefs and social customs (e.g. the rules surrounding marriage, initiation, and
confl[...]. in these areas our information is most sparse.

The aspect of inter-tribal rivalry is unclear - some[...]hat each tribe was hostile to its
neighbour (e.g. the Wollongong people were at war with those of Kiama[...]and based on specific events, such as affairs of the
heart or individual confrontation, and was not deep rooted.

The concept of ‘tribe’ is also questionable. A reading of the contemporary documents in this
compilation does n[...]al or language affiliations or boundaries used by the
Illawarra Aborigines prior to 1850. The earliest references are simply to ‘the natives of the district
known as Alowrie' (c.f. Flinders, 1796), or to the ‘Five islands Tribe’, as the whole district was then
known as the Five Islands.

it is only from the turn of the century — when white historians and anthropolog[...]g in
earnest aspects of Aboriginal cultures along the South Coast - that specific names such as Wodi
Wo[...]e allocated to local ‘tribes’ and languages.

The Illawarra natives did not follow a tribal system with defined chiefs and social hierarchies (as
typified by the American Indians), but lived in relatively small[...]ons to specific areas of land. Elderly members of the groups
were given due respect, but were only allocated the title of ‘chief’ or ‘King’ by Europeans.

For example, from surviving records we know that the Hooka family group lived by the shores of
Lake Illawarra (near present-day Dapto and along Hooka Creek) during the period 1820-40; the
Timbery family during the same period claimed a belonging to the area now known as Berkeley;
and the Bundle family claimed an association with the land upon which the town of Wollongong
grew. We do not know how long these individual families had lived in the area, though it may have
been for many tho[...]

White settlers initially grouped the local people into tribes based on locality, calling them the ‘Five
islands tribe’, or ‘Bong Bong tribe’, and during the 1830s and 1840s used this system to assist in
identification during the distribution of blankets.

The official ‘Returns of Blankets’ issued by the New South Wales government to local Aborigines
be[...]nd will be subjected to more detailed analysis in
the future (refer Appendix 1). They specify the various ‘Tribes’ and ‘Places of Resort’ to which the
local people subscribed. These returns have been reproduced over the following pages. Some
Returns are very specific a[...]s are confusing (refer Appendix 1).

In all cases the stated tribal name upon those Blanket Returns is based on a locality, so that, for
example, all the Aboriginal people resident in central lllawarra at the time were referred to as
members of the ‘Five Islands’ or ‘Wollongong’ tribe. However modern-day tribal groupings of the
lllawarra and South Coast Aborigines are based on information compiled by white anthropologists
from the late 1870s. Two divisions were initially presente[...]983):

*Thuruwa| (or Dharawal) - general name for the Aboriginal people of the area on the east coast of
New South Wales from Botany Bay to[...]i—Wadi) — a subdivision of Thuruwal, includes the Aboriginal people of the
coast from Wollongong to the Shoalhaven.

*Gurandada and Tharumba (or Dharumba) - those people living around the Shoalhaven River.
*Wandandian - those people living south of the Shoalhaven River and north of Jervis Bay.
*Gundungarra - the upland tribe (probably equivalent to the Bong Bong tribe of the 18305).
Some local people also referto the '13 Tribes of the South Coast.’

The historical relevance of these divisions is questionable. For example, the adoption of the term
‘Wodi Wodi’ in reference to the Aborigines of central lllawarra is based on the testimony of Lizzy
Malone, daughter of a woman of the Shoalhaven tribe, who stated (Ridley, 1875) that Wodi Wodi
was the name of the language spoken by the Aboriginal people of lllawarra, from Wollongong to
Shoalhaven. At some stage between 1875 and 1983 the term ‘Wodi Wodi’ has been adopted /
extended by white researchers to refer to the Aboriginal people of lllawarra, along with their

language.

Just as the word Koori once referred to an Aboriginal man fro[...]est
New South Wales, and Yuin was used by some of the South Coast people, now Koori is used as a
general term throughout the State instead of the more general, and European, Aborigine So also
ter[...]opriated by both black and white
researchers over the years and their original meaning lost.

The original inhabitants of central lllawarra may have had no specific tribal name, and the term
‘Wodi Wodi’ does not appear in any accou[...]Island tribe) or original family name as given in the 1832-42 blanket returns
(e.g. the Hooka and Timbery families), then to some much later tag assigned by white
anthropologists.

The above stated tribal subdivisions are there[...]

For example, the Aboriginal people from the Appin and Cowpastures areas west of the lllawarra
escarpment made an annual excursion to lllawarra via the mountain pass at Bulli prior to the 1840s
(refer E.Do||ahan Papers, Appendix 4), and there was regular communication between the
Aborigines of Bong Bong, Kangaroo Valley, Kiama, and the Shoalhaven according to historical
accounts.

D.K. Eades (1976) made detailed subdivisions of the lllawarra and South Coast Aborigines based
on kno[...]and extant language patterns. She concluded that the Thuruwal language
was spoken throughout the southern Sydney and Botany Bay region, in lllawarra, and south to the
Shoalhaven, depending on which author is referred[...]as early as 1796 Matthew Flinders had noted that the language of the Five Islands
people varied from that of the natives of Botany Bay.

These divisions of tribes[...]rs, have varied considerably amongst authors over the years.

The movement of lllawarra and South Coast Aborigines[...]to areas
such as Wreck Bay and Wallaga Lake after the 1850s has complicated the issue, such that a
language which was once possib[...]will need to be undertaken before we can suggest the true boundaries of the original (pre
1788) Aboriginal languages,[...]

Summary

This work is the first attempt to bring together all available historical information on the lllawarra
Aborigines covering the period 1770-1850. It is hoped that in future it w[...]by white and black historians and descendants of the original
Aboriginal inhabitants of lllawarra and the South Coast, as new material becomes available.

It is unfortunate that Europeans have authored or edited the majority of material in this compilation;
however theirs is the only physical record which survives to chronicle the history of the local
Aboriginal people, due mainly to the widespread destruction of traditional Aboriginal[...]eaming stories, art, artefacts, and songs — and the
lack of original documentary records kept by thos[...]ortunately Aboriginal culture still
flourishes on the far South Coast of New South Wales, with unbroken bonds dating back to the pre
1788 period.

The original white invaders of 1788 and their immediate descendants failed to record the rich
history and culture of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia as it existed in the years prior to 1788 and
immediately thereafter. So much has now been lost forever.

Despite the best attempts of white civilization to bring about their annihilation, the Aboriginal nation
of Australia lives on, both in lllawarra and throughout the land. It is to be hoped that this study will
play a part in the rediscovery of aspects of lllawarra Aborig[...]

ILLAWARRA
POLICE DISTRICT

1 I efiionrnsnu

Q‘V;'~5lLLAWARRA

SCMI: \ \ WOLLONGONG
Kllumcucs 5 0 5 ll) Kuunmm ;”I)APTO _/ —

-—— smu. I

unou zvuauaaw

Bmrolon BIV
V vdney
Pol} Iullvp[...]Y M3Y"0‘_d Hfumefsy/”’ ‘--"
, ‘ “""" I//~\k_(_)Bama(ang 1 -, I YTE

/ Z\/-

S ’IlD(_l_Hlfl |'t‘II

.,[...]

Guide to the Documents

This compilation is a gathering togeth[...]chival records, diaries, and letters referring to the lllawarra
and South Coast Aborigines. It merely skims the available material, and does not claim to be a
de[...]nts and references are constantly being located.

The material within this work has been arranged rough[...]ncluded both would have been impractical. Some of the manuscript material is also to be found
within the appendices.

There has been minimal editing of the original material, apart from the obvious extraction of
sections relating to the lllawarra and South Coast Aborigines, and no dele[...]may be
considered insensitive or controversial in the light of present-day attitudes and events. In mos[...]are given to assist in comprehension.

If any of the material contained in this work offends Aborigines or Europeans, or exhibits
ethnocentric bias, the compiler - whilst deeply regretting this - makes[...]or he has tried
to be as equitable as possible in the presentation of material, and the bias and racism present in
many of the accounts lies with the original authors, not with this compiler. The reader is left to
make his/her own interpretations and assessment of the worth or accuracy of the text.

The majority of original documents from the period 1770-1850 are presented without comment
from the editor, for they speak for themselves - only in regards to the trial for murder of Seth
Hawker in 1822 is there[...]eriod are relatively brief, a large percentage of the available
material has been included in this comp[...]l works - such as J.P.
Townsend's 1848 account of the Aborigines of Ulladulla during the 1830s - have not been included
for reasons of spa[...]less full references are given to such material.

The large number of important anthropological articles from the period 1870-1920 by workers such
as the Reverend William Ridley, A.W. Howitt, and especially R.H. Mathews, are recommended to
the reader interested in the society and customs of the lllawarra and South Coast Aborigines
during the latter part of the nineteenth century, at a period when some of the original inhabitants
were still living a traditio[...]e, though it had often been severely corrupted by the whiteman,
or could remember life prior to white interference. Unfortunately this material is the only indicator
we have of life as the Aborigines of lllawarra knew it prior to the white invasion. Reproduction of the
many journal articles and book chapters from this[...]local
study and should be referred to.

Similarly the numerous articles and reports detailing the archaeological studies carried out this
century, especially since 1930, are recommended to the reader interested in more than just the
history of the local Aboriginal people following the white invasion, as also are the reports of bodies
such as the Aborigines Protection Board and Department of Public Instruction (later the
Department of Education) describing social conditions this century.

The type of material reproduced over the following pages varies from newspaper reports - which
are often the only surviving accounts prior to the 1830s, and also usually full of the most

The other major sources of information from the pre 1850 period are the diaries and journals of
visitors to lllawarra and the South Coast, with the most substantial accounts of local native
customs and circumstances to be found in the writings of visitors such as the Reverend Harper
(1826); the Quakers Backhouse and Walker (1836); Reverend W.B. Clarke (1840); and the
reminiscences of Alexander Berry (1838 & 1871).

The later collections of personal papers and reminiscences from around the turn of the century by
people such as Alexander Stewart, Arch[...]gines such as Charley
Hooka and Tullimbar; whilst the publications and articles by anthropologists such as Andrew
Mackenzie, R.H. Mathews, and the Reverend William Ridley from the same period provide a wealth
of information on as[...]ceremonies and dreaming stories.

Whilst none of the above mentioned documents alone provides a defini[...]these sources blend to reveal a basic outline of the major elements
affecting the local Aboriginal people during the period 1788-1850. Unfortunately the more secret
and personal aspects of society were[...]s are taken are denoted thus:

{ ...... ..}
where the full reference is presented,

orthus:

( .... ..)

where an abbreviated reference only is given.

The following abbreviations are used throughout:

AON[...]HS lllawarra Historical Society

JRAHS Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society
ML Mit[...]

of the Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines

A small number of the Dreaming Stories of the Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines (also referr[...]uropeans) have been published and taken down over the years
since the arrival of white men. These stories, long considered juvenile and inconsequential by the
non-Aboriginal population, are of great significance both to the Australian Aborigines and our study
of their culture, for within them we often find the rules of social and religious behaviour as laid
d[...]d below represent a mere sample of that aspect of the Illawarra and South
Coast culture which originall[...]they represent a large portion of those which,
to the knowledge of this compiler, have survived in print. Undoubtedly many more exist in the
memories of the descendants of the original lllawarra and South Coast people (see Preface).

The majority of stories are from the recordings of white anthropologists taken during the period
1870-1900, with a number also gathered by C.W. Peck in the 1920s and 1930s, and Roland
Robinson during the 1950s (see below). The earliest stories in this collection were obtained long
after traditional society had been corrupted by the influence of white civilisation.

Some of the stories are only fragments, or have been heavily censored and ‘anglicized’ by the
transcriber; others are summary versions and inte[...]l aspects of
Aboriginality removed.

For example, the C.W. Peck stories of 1925 have been given a decided botanical flavour, making
reference to Peck's favorite flower - the waratah - wherever possible; whilst those of Roland
Robinson from the 1950s have often been transformed into verse.

The range of topics referred to in the stories is wide, dealing with subjects such as mythical beings;
the creation of earth and man; life after death; init[...]ems;
and historical events.

Unfortunately few of the stories reproduced below are first hand accounts[...]ew Mackenzie in 1874 attempting to remain true to the original
language and structure. Even more unfortunate is the dislocation of many of the stories from their
original locality / environment — an integral part of any Aboriginal narrative - and the failure of many
authors to record the name of the narrator or the circumstances and date of the telling. Even where
these details are included, the stories are further corrupted by the removal of the narrators from
their traditional homelands, such[...]nes residing at Wallaga Lake. in doing so much of the local significance
of the narration is lost.

Despite the aforementioned constraints (i.e. dislocation and transformation) of the dreaming
stories reproduced over the following pages, they nevertheless point to the richness of Aboriginal

The first part of the Dreaming Stories section includes material extracted from the publications of
the early anthropologists such as R.H Mathews, A.McKe[...]Peck.

C.W. Peck’s Australian Legends

During 1925 and 1933 C.W. Peck published two editions of his book Australian Legends - Tales
handed down from the remotest time by the autochthonous inhabitants of our land (Sydney 1925;
Melbourne 1933), it being a compilation of Abor[...]from areas of New South
Wales such as lllawarra, the South Coast, Burragorang Valley, Georges River, Tuggerah Lakes,
and the Riverina. The two editions were different, though there was some overlap in the stories
included.

Whilst the original narrators were not specifically named by Peck, information within the stories
points to their identity, with the majority coming from the Burragorang Valley area, and the
remainder from the Murray / Murrumbidge, and lllawa,rra / South Coas[...]of Taralga / Goulburn was originally told some of the
1925 stories ‘about sixty years ago’, and he in turn passed them on to his son Alex, who was a
member of the Burragorang Valley community and supposedly told the stories to Peck. Some of
the stories were published by Peck in Sydney journals such as The Sydney Mailand possibly The
Bulletin prior to appearing in the compilations.

Another informant - identified in the 1933 edition - was Ellen, an Aboriginal ‘princess’ from lllawarra,
and a daughter of the famous King Mickey. This was possibly Ellen Anderson who died in 1931.
She was most likely responsible for the stories from lllawarra, Appin, and the South Coast, as she
had been born at Unanderra.[...]tained numerous references to botanical
terms and the language is ‘flowery’ to say the least. Fortunately beneath this weight of words is to
be found much of significance to the local Aboriginal cultures.

The following is a list of relevant Aboriginal stories which appeared in the first edition in 1925, along
with the new stories from the third edition of 1933. The locality of each story is given where known,
whil[...]of relevance to eastern Australia:

1st edition

The First Waratah Burragorang Valley
The First Gymea or Gigantic Lily Campbelltown area
How the Waratah got its Honey Burragorang Valley
How the White Waratah became Red Sherbrooke

How the Pistels of the Waratah became Firm Burragorang Valley
Why the Waratah is Firm George’s River
The First Bush Fire Taralga

The First Kangaroo Yerranderie

The Salt Lakes Burragorang Valley
Shooting Stars

Why the Petiole of the Waratah grew Long Mount Tomah

The Clinging Koala Wollondilly

The White Man's Boots Burragorang Valley
The Hand that tried to draw a Waratah Burragorang Valley
Why Trees Have Bark -

The Legend of the Pheasant and the Jackass lllawarra

The Blood of the Bloodwood tree... Burragorang Valley

The blowing down of the mountains to the west EasternAustralia
The Fight of the Ants for a Waratah —

2nd edition
Prelude

A Princess lllawarra

A RoyalVisit lllawarra
Why the Turtle has no Tail lllawarra
The Dianella Berry East Coast
What Makesthe Waves Coalcliff
At Low Tide (The Coming of White Man) South Coast
A Bird Legend ll[...]nged Flower Appin
Mulgani Twofold Bay & lllawarra
The Black Satin South Coast

Some of Peck’s lllawar[...]stories are reproduced below.

Roland RObil'ISOl'I’S Narratives and Poems

During the 1950s the Australian author and poet Roland Robinson visited the South Coast and
recorded a number of Aboriginal d[...]ooks
such as B/ack-feller, Wh/'te—feIler(1958), The Man who sold his Dreaming(1965), Wandjani (1968),
Altjeringa (1970), and The nearest the White Man gets(1989).

Those stories of relevance to our study and known to the editor include the following:
‘ by Percy Mumbulla

The Battle at Wallaga Lake

The Bugeen, the Kangaroo Man

The Doowan, the Two Avengers

The Doolagarl, the Hairy-man

The Bunyip

Abley Wood and the Two Bugeens

The Gold of Billy Bulloo

Uncle Abraham (Minah) and the Dooroots
The Wild Women

Ejenak, the Porcupine

Underthe She-oaks

The White Pig, the Porcupine, and the Wonga Pigeon
The Runaway Lovers

Bees

Captain Cook

The Surprise Attack

Jacky Jacky

The Little People

The Bugeen

TheWha|ers

Gold and Grog and Pretty Stones

* by other narrators
The Wild Cherry Tree / Billy Bamboo (Billy Bamboo)
The Maker of Boomerangs / Adam Cooper (Malcolm Rivers and
WalterBlakeney)

The Bugeen and the Boundary-riders (David Carpenter)
Mr Wallaby (Bob Andy)
Bundoola, King of the Sea (David Carpenter)
Rites of Passage (WalterBla[...]ublications and his autobiographies for copies of the
stories and the circumstances of their telling.

Dreaming Stories reproduced overthe following pages include:

1 Arrival of the Thurrawal Tribe in Australia
2 TheHereafter

3 The Spirit ofthe Fig Tree

4 TheYaroma

5 Wallanthagang

6 Wulthegang

7 The Pleiades

8 Two Women and A Dog

9 Tootawa and Pooloongool

10 Wunbula - the Bat

11 The Story of Bundoola (I)

12 The Story of Bundoola (ll)

13 The Story of Bundoola (Ill)

14 Bundoola and the Birthplace of the South Coast Tribes
15 Mumuga - the Cave Monster

16 Gurungaty - the Water Monster

46

Dyillagamberra -the Rainmaker

Gurambugang - the Lizard

Kubbugang - the Bat

Merribi - the Thunder

TheThree Sisters

The Emu and the Native Companion

Daramuiun

Tuiugal - the Devil

Mirrirul - the Creator

Dreaming - A Vision of Death

Myths of the Burragorang Tribe
JerraThurawaidtheri

The NutGatherers

How the Pheasant and Eel went to Didthul

The Lyre Bird

Muigani

What Makes the Waves (Arrilla of Northern lllawarra)
Mist and a Fringed Flower

The First Crayfish

The Legend of the Lyrebird and the Kookaburra
Two Waratah Legends (The Black Snake Totem)
Another Legend (The Stars, a Meteor, and Volcanoes)
A Bird Legend (Totems)

Why the Turtle Has No Tail (The Journey After Death)
How the White Waratah became Red

The Black Satin Bird

The Dianella Berry

Why the Waratah is Firm

At Low Tide (Allambee and the Great White Spirit)

The Gigantic Lily and the Waratah

For further dreaming stories from the far South Coast and Victoria refer also Aldo Mass[...]1897), Howitt (1904), Frazer (1910),
and Roheim (1925).

Arrival of the Thurrawal Tribe in Australia

{The following lllawarra story is taken from R.H. Mathews’ Folklore of the Australian Aborigines
(1899). It was given to Mathews by an Aborigine from the Shoalhaven area in the 1890s, and
describes the arrival of the Aboriginal (Thurrawal) people in lllawarra, landing at the entrance to
Lakelllawarra.

A variation is also reproduced below in George Brown’s ‘Bundoola and the Birthplace of the South
Coast Tribes’ (lllawarra Mercury, 1990)}

In the remote past all the animals that are now in Australia lived in another land beyond the sea.
They were at that time human creatures, and resolved to leave that country in a canoe, and come
to the hunting-grounds in which they are at present.

The whale was much larger than any of the rest, and had a canoe of great dimensions; but he[...]d small canoes, which were unfit for use far from the
land. The other people, therefore, watched in the hope that an opportunity might present itself of
the whale leaving the boat, so that they could get it, and start away o[...]rney; but he always
kept a strict guard over it.

The most intimate friend of the whale was the starfish, and he conspired with the other people to
take the attention of the whale away from his canoe, and so give them a chance to steal it, and
start away across the ocean. So, one day, the starfish said to the whale, "You have a great many
lice on your head; let me catch them and kill them for you." The whale, who had been very much
pestered with the parasites, readily agreed to his friend's kind of[...]ide a rock, on which they then went and sat down. The starfish immediately gave the signal
to some of the co-conspirators, who soon assembled in readiness to go quietly into the canoe as
soon as the whale’s attention was taken off it.

The starfish then commenced his work of removing the vermin from the whale’s head, which he
held in his lap, while the other people all got quickly into the canoe, and rowed off. Every now and
then the whale would say, ''Is my canoe all right?" The starfish, who had provided himself with a
piece o[...]ady by his side, answered: "Yes, this is it which I am tapping with my hand",
at the same time hitting the bark, which gave the same sound of the bark of the canoe. He then
resumed his occupation, scratching vigorously about the whale’s ears, so that he could not hear
the splashing of the oars in the water.

The cleaning of the whale’s head and the assurances on the safety of the canoe went on with
much garmlity on the part of the starfish, until the people had rowed off a considerable distance
from the shore, and were nearly out of sight. Then the patience of the whale becoming exhausted,
he insisted upon having[...]When he
discovered that it was gone, and saw all the people rowing away in it as fast as they could go, he
became very angry, and vented his fury upon the starfish, whom he beat unmercifully, and t[...]

The whale pursued the fugitives, and in his fury spurted the water into the air through a wound in
the head received during his fight with the starfish, a practice which he has retained ever since.
When the people in the canoe saw him coming afterthem, the weaker-ones were very much afraid,
and said: "He[...]l surely overtake us, and drown us everyone." But the
native bear, who was in charge of the oars, said, "Look at my strong arms. l am able to pull the
canoe fast enough to make good our escapel" and h[...]g
additional efforts to move more rapidly through the water.

This voyage lasted several days and night[...]raight line was made for it. On getting alongside the shore, all the people landed from the canoe
sat down to rest themselves. But the native companion, who had always been a great fellow for
dancing and jumping about, danced upon the bottom of the canoe until he made a hole in it with
his feet, a[...]lf got out of it, and shoved it a little way from the shore, where it
settled down in the water,and became the small island now known as Gan-man-gang, near the
entrance of Lake lllawarra into the ocean.

When the whale arrived shortly aftenivards, and saw his canoe sunk close to the shore, he turned
back along the coast, where he and his descendants have remained ever since.

The Hereafter

{The following Shoalhaven story is taken from R.H. Mathews’ Folklore of the Australian Aborigines
(1899), and describes the circumstances of Aboriginal life after death}

About three-quarters of a mile north-westerly from the Coolangatta homestead, the residence of
the late Mr Alexander Berry, is a remarkable rock on the eastern side of the Coolangatta mountain.
This rock slopes easterly with an angle of about 30 degrees from the horizon, and on its face are
six elongated depressions, caused by the weathering away of the softer portions of the stone.
These places are suggestive of having been worn by the feet of many persons having used them,
like the depressions worn in pavements by much traffic. This has given rise to a superstition among
the Aborigines that these marks were made in the rocks by the feet of the spirits of many
generations of natives sliding from the upper to the lower side of it. This belief is strengthened by
the fact that the first two depressions are larger than the rest; the next pair on the left of them are
somewhat smaller; and the last pair, furtherto the left are smaller still.

The Aboriginal legend is that the larger marks were made by the feet of the men; the medium size
by the women; and the smaller by the children. One of the old blackfellows, who was with me when
I visited this place, stated that always after a death in the camp, this rock presented the
appearance of having been used. If the deceased was a man, the large marks looked fresh; if a
woman, the middle pair; and if a child, the smaller slides showed indications of someone having
slipped along them.

It was from this rock that the shade of the native took its final departure from its present hunting
grounds, and this was accomplished in the following manner:- a very long stem of a cabbage[...]man vision, reached from some unknown land across the sea to this rock.
When a blackfellow died, his soul went in the night to the top of the rock, and standing there for a

few moments, looked out towards the sea, which is about two miles distant. Then he slid down the
hollow grooves, one foot resting in each, and when he got to the lower side of the rock he could
distinguish the end of the long pole, on which he jumped, and walked away along it to the
sea—coast, and onwards across the expanse of water.

The pole continued over the sea, and in following it along the traveller came to a place where the
flames of fire seemed to rise out of a depression in the water. If he had been a good tribesman, he
would be able to pass through the flames unscathed; but if he had been a bad man, who had
broken the tribal laws, he might get scorched and fall into the sea, or perhaps he would get
through it more or less singed.

After a while the end of the pole was reached at the other side of the sea. The traveller then
continued on along a track through the bush, and after a time met a crow, who said: "You[...]ereupon threw a spear at him, but missed him, and the man kept on his way,
the crow calling him bad names, and making a great no[...]men where there.
One of these men was standing on the ground, and was some relative of the traveller; but the other
man, who was up in the tree, was a vindictive person, and would kill him if he got the chance. He
asked the trave||er’s friend to bring him underthe tree, but in doing so the friend warns him to take
care. The enemy up the fig-tree is gathering figs, and is squeezing them together around a quartz
crystal, which has the effect off causing the lumps of figs to increase in size and weight. He then
calls out to the traveller to stand out in a clear space, so that he can throw him the bundle of fruit.
The pilgrim, however, suspects his evil intentions, a[...]and being hungry, stoops down to pick up some of the figs which have fallen
to the ground, having been shaken off by the wind. The enemy in the tree then throws the bundle
of figs at him, which by this time has changed into a large stone, but he misses his mark, owing to
the scrub and undergrowth obstructing his view.

The traveller now resumed his journey, and the track along which he was going passed through a
n[...]with his shield,
and succeeded in getting through the pass. Upon this the parrots set up a great chattering, similar
to tha[...]there are plenty of trees but no under-scrub,
and the grass is green. There are plenty of kangaroos and[...]some young men playing ball in a clear place near the camp. There the traveller sees his
relatives and all his friends who have died before him. He sits down a little way from the people,
and when his relations see him, they come and welcome him, and conduct him into the camp,
where they paint and dress him in the same way that he was accustomed to ornament his p[...]orroboreeing is indulged in, and he plays
amongst the rest.

Presently an old, dirty—looking blackfel[...]made just now?" They answer him that it was only the young
people playing about. The ugly old man cannot come into the camp because there is a
watercourse defining the boundary of his hunting grounds, beyond which he dare not pass. If he
were to see the new arrival he might point a bone at him, or work some other injury, by means of
sorcery. This is why the people give him an evasive answer, on receiving w[...]camp, which is a little distance farther on.

if the person who died had been greedy or quarrelsome, or had always been causing trouble in the
tribe, he would meet with a different reception at the end of the journey. In order to describe this, it
will be necessary to take the reader back to that part of the story where the crow threw the spear.

If the traveller has been a troublesome fellow, the spear pierces him and the crow comes and picks
mouthfuls of flesh out of him, and knocks him about; after which he pulls out the spear and starts

the man on his journey again. When he reaches the place where the large fig-tree is growing, there
is no friend there to warn him of danger, so he walks carelessly under the tree, and commences to
pick up and eat the ripe figs which have fallen to the ground. The enemy up in the tree watches his
opportunity, and throws the bundles of figs, which he has changed to stone by his jugglery, down
upon the traveller, bruising him severely and stretching him almost lifeless on the ground. The man
then comes down out of the tree and shakes the traveller, and stands him on his feet and starts
him on his way, bruised and bleeding from the wounds, and scarcely able to walk.

When at last he reaches the forest of green trees and the camp of his countrymen, the people
shout to him that they don't want him there, and make signs to him to go on. The scabby old
blackfellow before referred to then makes his appearance, and asked the usual question: "Who
came when that noise was made?" The people answer him that a stranger came; whereupon, the
old man calls the traveller to him, and takes him away to his own camp. The wounds made by
those clever old wizards, the crow and the man in the fig-tree, never heal properly, and give the
injured man a scabby and dirty appearance ever atten/vards.

The Spirit of the Fig Tree

{The following story is taken from a Thurrawal legend initially published by A.MacKenzie (1874)
and later by the Reverend William Ridley (1875), and P.Turbet (198[...]published by RH. Mathews in 1904 and re-titled ‘The Yaroma’}

A man was once gathering wild figs in[...]ket. As he was filling it, a yaroma, hiding
among the fig tree's buttresses, seized the man and tried to swallow him. But because the man
was tall, the yaroma couldn't fit him all in. The man's feet were sticking out of the spirit’s mouth. It
hopped to the water and had a drink but still could not completely swallow the victim.

The big man made the spirit nauseous so it spat him out. It decided to[...]rits but, before departing, had to make sure that the man was dead. The yaroma tickled
him and watched for any movement, but the man lay still. It set off but, worried that the man was
feigning death, came back and continued t[...]aving again, and this time travelling a long
way, the spirit once more returned to tickle and check for signs of life. Finally convinced that the
man had been killed, it went off into the mountains.

The man, seeing his chance, leaped up and ran toward the ocean but, before he could reach it, the
yaroma returned and gave chase. With the spirit hot on his heels, the man jumped into the sea and
swam out to an island. The yaroma walked along the beach and onto the rocks, calling on the man
to come back. ‘Come here’, he shouted. Eventually the man’s friends arrived, armed with spears,
and the man paddled to shore in a canoe. ‘The spirit is this way’ the man said. They searched for
the yaroma but it had disappeared into a hole in the rocks.

The Yaroma

{Reproduced from R.H. Mathews’ ‘Ethnological Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of New South
Wales and Victoria’, Journal of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 1904, pp.361 -3. This tale is a
re-telling of the ‘Spirit of the Figtree’ story which was initially publi[...]

The Yaroma is a creature closely resembling a man, but of greater stature, and having hair all over
the body. its mouth is large, which enables it to swa[...]and at every jump their
genital appendages strike the ground, making a loud, sudden noise, like the report of a gun, or the
cracking of a stockwhip.

Yarromas have short legs and large, long feet, of a different shape to the feet of human beings.
When one of these monsters is heard in the vicinity of a native camp during the evening, the
people keep silent and rub their genitalia with their hands, and puff or spit in his direction. Some of
the headmen or doctors shout out the name of some locality a long way off, and the Yaroma is
supposed to depart to that place. if they cannot be dispersed by this means, the men take sticks
which have been lighted in the fire - a stick in each hand - and strike them together to throw out
sparks. This usually causes the Yaroma to disappear into the ground, making a flash of light as he
does so. If[...]ey have long teeth which they
sharpen on rocks in the high ranges; and some of the old men aver that they know of rocks where

there[...]ig tree to pick up ripe figs, which had fallen to
the ground, when a Yaroma, which was hidden in a hollow place in the base of the tree, rushed out
and catching hold of the man, swallowed him head first. It happened that the victim was a man of
unusual length, measuring more than a foot taller than the majority of his countrymen. Owing to
this circumstance, the Yaroma was not able to gulp him farther than the calves of his legs, leaving
his feet protruding from the monster’s mouth, thus keeping it open and allowing the air to descend
to the man's nostrils, which saved him from suffocation.

The Yaroma soon began to feel a nausea similar to wha[...]ubstance gets stuck in one’s throat. He went to the bank of the river close by and took a drink of
water to moist[...], thinking by this means to suck into his stomach the remainder of his
prey, and complete his repast. This was all to no purpose, however, for, becoming sick, the
Yaroma vomited the man out on the dry land. He was still alive, but feigned to be d[...]er
that he might perhaps have a chance of escape. The Yaroma then started away to bring his mates
to assist him to carry the dead man to their camp. He wished, however, to make quite sure that the
man was dead before he left him, and after going but a short distance, he jumped back suddenly,
but the man lay quite still. The Yaroma got a piece of grass and tickled the man's feet, and then his
nose, but he did not mov[...]Finally he got a bulI—dog ant and made it sting the man's
penis, but he never flinched. The Yaroma, thinking he was certainly dead, again started away for
help, and when he got a good distance off, the man, seeing his opportunity, got up and ran with all
his speed into the water close by, and swam to the opposite shore and so escaped.

Wallanthagang

{R[...]his food by catching
parrots which he speared in the feet, so that their bodies might not be damaged for eating. He
frequented the thick tea-tree scrubs and brush in the swamps near Cambewarra mountain, in the

If a blackfellow met Wallanthagang in the bush he would not speak, unless first addressed. He
would then imitate what the man said, as it trying to learn the language. The blackfellow would
probably think this boy~|ike pe[...]give Wallanthagang a clout. He
would then msh at the blackfellow, and catching hold of him, throw him up several feet into the air,
and let him fall heavily upon the ground. This would be repeated many times in quick succession,
until the man became very sick at the stomach and quite helpless. Wallanthagang would now carry
the man to a bull-dog ants‘ nest, and lay him down[...]Campbell was given snippets of information
about the mysterious creature called ‘Wulthegang’ who inhabited the Cambewarra Mountain. His
informant was Buthring,[...]ctant to reveal
details of this mysterious being. The first account was recorded on 18 October 1899, in reply to
Campbell's question regarding the native name of Cambewarra Mountain}

Cambewarra Mountain

The native name forthis he said, was not the above, but "Gumbeengang". And here he volunteered[...]to launch forth in superstitious legend - He said the mountain was so
named on account of a ''little hairy man" who lived in a cave situated near the top of the range. The
"little man" had lived there from time immemorial[...]llows did, but ate bush
possums, which existed in the locality for his use. He (Buthring) had never seen the little man, or
his cave, but his father had, and all the old blackfellows, passed away, knew everything about him.

The cave was carved all over by the little man, who passed his time doing such carving which was
the original pattern that used to be worked on the inside of the best made possum rugs
manufactured by the blacks in years gone by - that was to say, within the early days of settlement
by Europeans in the district. He said all old residents would remember the patterns that the blacks
used to trace on the inside of the possum rugs, many years ago, which patterns he ga[...]horitative earnestness as having been designed by the "little man" and obtained from him. And
he was quite emphatic about the said cave and little man being on the mountain top still.

[On 14 February 1900, Archib[...]n further information re Wulthegang by
Buthring:

The Little Man of the Cambewarra Mountain (he told me about before) he says is about the height
of a table, and his colour "quarter-caste" - blacker than a white man, & whiterthan a half-caste.

[The final version of the Wallanthagang story was given to Campbell[...]

Wulthegang is only a[...]and they have piccaninnies, but neither
Jins nor the latter are ever seen - nor Wulthegang himself. He[...]lled by him that came in his way.

He has been in the cave from time immemorial, and will remain there for all future time.
In olden times the Aborigines say there were another lot of small wild Blacks about forty or fifty
miles up the Shoalhaven River country above Nowra. They were called "Jangbeegang". They were

about the same stature as Wulthegang and his Jins. Unlike h[...]d
Blacks - not mysterious beings.

Buthring gives the same name "Jangbeegang" to the Cambewarra Mountain over which the Nowra
- Kangaroo Valley [road] passes.

The Aboriginal name for the high sand—stone cap of the mountain in which Wulthegang resided
was "Boorrul". He carved pictures on the face of the rocks, quite expertly, and his carvings were
there to be seen by any person visiting the place.

These particulars are additional to what[...]t would seem to me that he has a dread

of giving the name of the "little man". He wanted to know if I had an intention to "catch him", &
warned me that he could kill him (Buthring) & myself & many more.

The Pleiades

{The Pleiades are two stars seen in the southern skies. The following version of the Thurrawal story
recording their origin was recorded by Andrew Mackenzie (1874, p.260)}

The Pleiades - A Thurawal Story

The moon came, the moon was enamoured, came to the Mullymoola damsels.

They were catching kaioong,[...]Poolinjerunga, near Kan.

They went to Jindoula. The Southron heard them.

Where are they singing about me? I hear them singing about me in the gully; let me have pipe clay
to corroboree; sing that song; let me dance. l’ll spear you in the eye.

They go under the ground - they went up to the sky; the sisters became stone.

[The following adaptation of the story was published by Reverend William Ri[...]

One day the Mullymoola sisters were at Poolinjirunga, near Ka[...]re roasting them with hot stones. Also cooking in the fire were piaming bulbs. The Moon,
attracted by their beauty, approached the young women but they heard him coming and went off
to Jindowla.

He followed and heard them singing the Southron but could not see them.
‘Where are they singing about me?’ he cried.

‘I hear them about me, singing in the gully. Let me have pipeclay to corroboree. Sing that song; let
me dance.’

He threatened to spear them in the eye if they did not show themselves, but the sisters went into
the ground and then up into the sky. They had turned to stone.

Two Women and A D[...]p.124-5) ‘This anecdote, recorded by Mathews in the lllawarra, is
obviously a remnant of a longer story. It tells of the formation of some prominent rocks in the hills
between Kangaroo Valley and the sea’}

Two women were out in the bush gathering burrawang seeds and putting them into net bags,
kurama. During the day they met a dog who was carrying a mullet, mur[...]ed him
where he had caught it and as he answered, the women, their bags of burrawang seeds and their
ya[...]{This story was recorded in Tharumba (spoken on the Shoalhaven River) by Andrew Mackenzie of
the Shoalhaven. It was related to him by Hugany, an Aborigine of the Wandandian tribe, and was
published by the Reverend William Ridley (1875, pp.143-4) and reproduced in the following form in
P. Turbet (1989, p.125)}

A man[...]been cooking. He
carried it over his shoulder to the camp and roasted it there. He gave a piece to his dog and then
carried the largest portion to Pooloongool, his father-in-law.

Pooloongool complained that the meat was rotten. His son, who was also in camp, s[...]inyara to get some more meat so everyone got into the canoes and paddled
down to the sea.

Tootawa was very angry about what Pooloongo[...]jump,
jump, jump. He split his tongue and he spat the blood west, east, south and north.

The west wind sprang up. The rain came too. They said ‘Oh dear! Pooloongool,[...]a bad word to your son-in-law this morning about the meat. Look at the
rain and the wind!’ Pooloongoo|’s canoe was swamped and he was in danger of drowning.

The Pelican said, ‘Pooloongool, come here. I'll put you in my canoe. Get along! I’ll put you in my
canoe.’ Pooloongool shouted ‘Put me into the canoe! Put me into the canoe!’

He got into the Pelican's canoe and they made it safely to the shore. The Musk Duck was bailing
water out of his canoe - dip, dip, dip, dip, drip, drip, drip, drip. He paddled to the shore flapping
and splashing all the way. The Black Cormorant and Pied Cormorant dived under the water to
escape the tempest. They dive for fish now and feed in the water all day long.

There was no wind in former times. Tootawa brought all the wind that now blows from the west,
south, east and north. It blows now all the while.

Wunbula the Bat

{This tale was initially recorded in Tharumba (spoken on the Shoalhaven River) by Mr Andrew
Mackenzie of the Shoalhaven. It was related to him by Noleman, an Aborigine of the Wandandian
tribe, and was published by the Reverend William Ridley (1875, pp.144-5) and reproduced in the
following form in P. Turbet (1989, pp.125-6)}

Wunbula the Bat and his two wives, Murrumbool the Brown Snake and Moondtha the Black Snake,
went from Columbri, passed Collijaga[...]Murrumbool and
Moondtha waited. One woman said to the other ‘Our husband makes us tired taking us about; we’ll
block up the mouth of the hole and go back to camp.’

Wunbula went far into the hole, and when he came back found he was trapped.[...]id. But soon he heard a fly buzzing and, carrying the dog
under his arm, followed the insect a long way through the tunnel until it escaped through a little
hole. He enlarged thethe creek bank and he said, ‘Come on. Let’s bathe - you on
one side, you on the other and me in the middle.’ There were barbed spears sticking out of the
creek bottom on each side and as the women got into the water they were impaled. They went up
into the sky to become stars in the Munowra (part of Canis Major) and Wunbula, their husband,
went up to.

The Story of Bundoola (I)

{This tale was recorded by A.Mackenzie (1874, p[...]was given it in a number of
versions - including the following in English by Bimmoon of the Ulladulla tribe}

He had with him two wives, their four children, of which three by a former husband, and the mother
of one of the wives. He did not treat the children well. He used to give them for food, shark,
stingaree, kooroodthoo, and nijoolodjong, the two latter fish resembling eels and stingarees. The
mothers used to tell the children not to eat the trash, but throw it away.

They came from a place called Banboro, in the mountains near Jamberoo - Bundoola used to
boast[...]oe,
leaving wives, mother-in-law, and children in the camp. The sea was smooth and the weatherfine.

He was very successful in his fishi[...], you watch me," he said. They signified assent.

The women began to talk to one another about the foolishness of remaining with a man who
treated them so ill, and the favourableness of the opportunity of running away. They fled with the
children and all their things.

Bundoola still ke[...]e thought; but he was deceived. What he heard was the noise made by the morat, or two trees
touching and rubbing against one another when agitated by the wind.

At last, having filled his canoe with fish[...]to leave off fishing and come ashore.
As soon as the canoe touched the sand, he shouted to his wives to help him to draw it up with its
load on the beach.

The sound of the morat, just then repeated, made him think that hi[...]e attended to. At a
loss, however, to account for the delay in the women’s coming, he went to the camp and found it
empty. He cooeyed again, and again heard the cry of the morat. He followed the direction of the
sound, until it brought him in sight of the artifice by which he had been deceived.

He was at first furious with rage, but having picked up the tracks of the fugitives, followed the trail,
weeping as he went along. The tracks led him to Burrier. He carried a canoe with which to cross
the river, and left it at Yalwal, where it can yet be seen fossilised. Thence he went to Kangargraon
in quest of the runaways. He followed the river up to Noorunmaia.

Whenever he fell in with a wallaby or paddymelon, he would imagine it was one of the party he was
in search of, and call out, "Stop, come to[...]ey were encamped with their friends.

Approaching the camp, Bundoola gave the customary cooey. The camp was all on alert. "Ay, ay,
here's the master, the villain, coming."

Bundoola, as usual with visito[...]off. His wives brought him
fire, and went back to the camp. He crushed out the fire, pretending that it had gone out of itself.[...]ing brand, and this time he kindled a good blaze. The women
remained with him.

Next morning there was to be a great kangaroo hunt. The women said to their relatives, "these
children are nearly poisoned to death with the carrion given them to eat by their father." One of the
children was Bundoo|a's own, a boy; three, a boy and two girls, belonged to a man who was dead.

The tribe called to Bundoola to light a fire and make a spear for the hunt. He was not long in
making a capital spear. The hunters betook themselves to a long point,[...]

kangaroos. Bundoola distinguished himself by the distance at which he struck his game. He did
not[...]yards to be sure of his mark. Fifteen kangaroos, the
result of the morning’s sport, were put into the ovens of earth and hot stones. After the feast his
connections told him they would next da[...]game and native honey.

During this excursion, as the party stood on the edge of a cliff, the old men gathered about
Bundoola, and pushed him over the precipice. He fell a great way, but was not kille[...]g vine for him to lay hold of, and drew him up to the top. -Just as he stretched out his
hand to catch hold of the summit, one of them severed the vine with an amubuga, and down he fell
again to the bottom, this time completely crushed.

"Yenaunga,[...]to his own place. As he journeyed south, he tried the

different caves in the cliffs, but found them all too diminutive for his[...]ended, and

there he sits petrified to this day.

The Story of Bundoola (II)

{This version of the Bundoola story was recorded by A.Mackenzie (1874, p.257) from Bimmoon, of
the Ulladulla tribe}

I go fishing, I am going to spear fish; my canoe, my fish spear.

What a fine calm sea. l'll paddle overthere to the surf at the rock.

l'll go to the bush, the sea is too rough.

l'll paddle out to sea again.[...]t far.

He follows them.

Where are you? hilloa!

I hear them over there, I must go thither. There they are, the Southerners, says he, that’s our
brother-in—law coming.

Let us go, let us make the spear ready; all ready; you are good marksman, you wait here, because
this is the path that the kangaroo takes his road.

Let us go, brother—in-law, you’ll see you wife's country, you’ll see the great precipice.
Bundoo|a’s wife belongs to that place.

You come close to the edge, you stop here.

Rope, you catch hold of the rope, vine.

He comes up the long way to the top.

Cut the rope, serve you right, you dead now.

This was at Banboro.

I'll go home to my place, this place is too rough. l’|| go and try another place.
I’ll go a little further.

This is a good habitation. l’lI stop here at Bundarwa.

The Story of Bundoola (III)

{This version of the Bundoola story was recorded by A.Mackenzie (1874, pp.257-8) from Thooritgal
of the Ulladulla tribe}

Blackfellow came from southward[...]and fish.

Oh, calm, very smooth!

He jumped into the canoe.

You see me? Yes.

We’ll go, because he[...]h. We have left Bundoola.
Hilloal there they are, the southerners.

Fetch us a firestick. Here! it has[...]t: mine (spear) is ready.

You stop here, because the game runs this way.

There they are, there they a[...]Ourbrother-in—law has speared him. We’ll take the meat overlhere.
Let us roast the meat.

Look, look, look, brother-in—law! Have a look at the place belonging to your wife.

Oh dear! my canoe and fish-spear all lying[...]other—in—law, catch hold again.

Let us go to the camp.

Where is he?

I don’t know.

Let us go hence to Barwera.

Bundoola and the

Birthplace of the South Coast Tribes

{The following story, taken from the Illawarra Mercury of 7 July 1990, was given by George Brown
of Wreck Bay. it contains elements of the Bundoola story and tells of the significance of Beecroft
Peninsula, Jervis Bay, and the origin of the 13 tribes of the South Coast}

Jervis Bay, said George, is a place he knew before he arrived. Beecroft is central to the Bay’s
Aboriginal history.

"As an Aboriginal person it (Beecroft) is one of the most important parts of our history," George
said.

"This is the birthplace of the 13 tribes of the South Coast.

When the creator Mirrigaal made the earth from the dust of the stars, the Rainbow Serpent and
Bundoola, the rain spirit, made the rain and storms. And the Rainbow Serpent crawled across the
land and created the rivers and lakes.

Bundoola was the great rain spirit, and this was his home," George said.

Then from the dust of the earth Mirrigaal formed the spirits of the birds, fish, animals and peoples
of the world. He took the dust of the earth and gave everything its form and substance. Therefore
the earth is our mother," George explained.

Bundoola had 13 wives, the mothers of the 13 tribes of the South Coast. But Bundoola was not that
easily stated. He tried to take a 14th wife, offending both the spirits and the elders who called a
meeting to decide his fate.[...]im to death," George said, "and he was thrown off the cliffs at Beecroft into
what they call the Devil’s Hole."

Mumuga - the Cave Monster

{The following Thurrawal story is reproduced from R.H.[...]904,
p.345)}

Mumuga is another fabled monster of the Thurrawal, possessing great strength and residing[...]en he is pursuing a blackfellow he flatulates all
the time as he runs, and the abominable smell of the ordure overcomes the individual, so that he is
easily captured. If the person who is attacked has a fire stick in his hand, the stink of Mumuga has
no effect upon him.

Gurungaty - the Water Monster

{The following Thurrawal story is reproduced from Fl.H[...]al Notes.....’ (1904,
p.345)}

Gu—ru-ngaty is the name of an aquatic monster among the Thurrawal and Gundungarra tribes. He
resides in d[...]rm his own
people. He usually climbed a tree near the water, from which he kept a look out. If he saw a
stranger approaching, he slid down and dived into the water, without making a splash, or leaving
any ripples on the surface. As soon as the individual began to drink, he was caught by Gurungaty.

Dyillagamberra - the Rainmaker

{The following South Coast story is reproduced from R.[...]‘Ethnological Notes.....’ (1904,
pp.350-1)}

The natives of the south-east coast of New South Wales have a legend[...]them. When he went away from them he travelled up the
Tuross River, and at short intervals dug holes or springs, some on the sides of hills, and others on
the tops. This was to secure a supply of water for his people, and the waterholes still remain. He
made these lagoons and springs all the way till he got to a mountain the natives call Barrity-burra
at the head of the Tuross River.

There is a deep lagoon or large waterhole at the foot of the mountain, said to contain all kinds of
fish which frequent either the sea or the fresh water. in this lagoon there is plenty of nyiwun
(congevoi) attached to the rocks around the margin or projecting above the surface of the water. A
large rock overhangs one side of the lagoon, and away in one of its dark corners is the camping
place of Dyillagamberra, who lives upon fish and congevoi. On the hillside, above the waterhole,

the grou ndis strewn with different kinds of shells, such as oyster shells, cockle shells, mussel shells
and the like.

in time of drought, if two or three old me[...]rain,
he pours immense quantities of water out of the hole, and causes a flood in the Tuross River,
accompanied by great rain. When asking Dyillagamberra to cause showers, the old men go
through certain ceremonial incantations, and throw a stone into the lagoon to produce a surface
ripple. They also mention the locality and the people affected by the drought. Sometimes the rain
comes so suddenly that the people have to seek shelter in caves, or in hollow trees, or under large
logs. Occasionally the showers are accompanied by hail.

Gurambugang - the Lizard

{The following Thurrawal story is reproduced from R.H.[...]ical Notes.....’ (1904,
p.346)}

Gurambugang is the Thurrawal name of a small, smooth-skinned dark-co[...]other irritating substance in his eye, he catches the lid in his finger and
thumb and moves it up and down, opening and shutting the eye, repeating in a singing tone:

Bindi, bindi, gurambugang
Dill, dill, dill!
The meaning is, "Wake up, wake up, gurambugang" - dill being merely a request to the injured eye

to open. The man continues to repeat these words and moving the eyelid, till the object falls out of
the eye.

Kubbugang - the Bat

{The following Thurrawal story is reproduced from R.H.[...]show its location to anyone, they must point with the
thumb, and not with the finger.

Merribi - the Thunder

{The following Thoorga story is reproduced from[...]

If very bad thunder and lightning occur during the night, the old men hold burning sticks in their
hands and call out to Merribi, the thunder, to go away to another place which they name,and
request him to take the lightning with him as a torch, to show him light to fish for bulundyulung, a
small black fish.

The Three Sisters

{The following story is taken from Aldo Massola's The Aborigines of South-Eastern Australia (1 971,
p.42). It describes the formation of an unusual group of rocks known as the Three Sisters, located
on the New South Wales south coast near Narooma}

Long a[...]riosity, they asked him where he had got it
from. The minute the dog began to answer, the sisters were turned into three rocks.

The Emu and the Native Companion

{The following story is taken from Aldo Massola's The Aborigines of South-Eastern AustraIia(1971,
p.43). This common tale from south eastern Australia describes the rivalry between the emu and
the native companion}

At one time these two large bi[...]ck, and when it was her turn to cook her share of the yams for
their meal, Mrs Native Companion would not lend her hers. Mrs Emu first used one foot and then
the other as fire-sticks, but having scorched them bl[...]venge herself on Mrs Native Companion.

Next time the two erstwhile friends met, they had their children with them. The two families
separated to gather edible roots. Mr[...]n Mrs Native
Companion asked what had happened to the others, Mrs Emu said she had cooked and eaten
the[...]panion then cooked and ate all
her children, with the exception of two. This is why the native companion lays only two eggs at a
time.

Daramulun

{The following description of Daramulun is adapted from Aldo Massola's The Aborigines of
South-EasternAusfra/ia (1971 , p.36)}

Daramulun, son of Baiami, is the principal deity of the south coast tribes of New South Wales.

Baiami created the rivers, mountains, and the landscape; then men, then women. He gave each
man[...]nd women how to gather
edible roots. Then he gave the tribes their laws.

Daramulun, his son, was put i[...]ather’s creation and punished men it they broke
the laws. In time his popularity eclipsed that of his[...]ceremonial grounds.

[Peter Turbet (1989), gives the following account of Daramulan, or Daramulun:

A[...]it went up to Daramulan when he died. Thunder and the sound of the bullroarer, which
mimicked thunder, were believed[...]robably knew something about them too.

Tulugal - the devil

{The following story from Moruya was recorded by Horat[...]o
New South Wales in 1839-40. It is possible that the narrator was interviewed in Sydney}

.....At the Muruya River the devil is called Tulugal. He was described to us,[...]vertakes a man,
but very short arms, which brings the contest nearest an equity.

This goblin has a wif[...]but that they seem to characterise
so distinctly the people, at once timid, ferocious, and stupid, who have invented them...

Mirrirul - the Creator

{The following story was recorded by Reverend William[...]ch Mirrirul stands to receive them when they die. The good he takes up to the
sky, the bad he sends to another place to be punished.

Mrs Malone remembers when a little child, hearing the women in the camp say to disobedient
children, to deter them f[...]ill not allow it.

Dreaming - A Vision of Death

{The following story was recorded by Reverend William[...]boriginal, was once in a trance forthree days. At
the end of that time her brother or husband (Mrs Malone’s uncle) let off a gun; on which she awoke
out of the trance. She then told them she had seen a long path, with fire on both sides of it. At the
end of this path stood her father and mother, wai[...]"Mary Ann, what brought you here?" she said ’'I don’t know, I was dead."
Her mother said to her, "you go back."

She saw it all quite plain.

Stories of the Burragorang Tribe

{The following stories were recorded by M.Feld (1900) respecting the Aborigines of the
Burragorang Valley}

.....They believed that Guba lived among the mountains. He is supposed to be a wild, hairy man[...]about thirty feet long, by which he would hang to the
highest tree, in readiness to seize any of the Aborigines as they passed.

They had another supe[...]spirit they called Dthuwan-gong, who lived among the
rocks, and had enormous wings, with which he exti[...]ers.

These two were supposed to be Yuam-bir’s (the real devil’s) scouts. The tradition about Yuam-bir
is that they killed him[...]ught him there for two days, and smashed him into the ground
with nulla nullas, so there is now no devi[...]after death) for their dead.
Their only dread is the devil's scouts, as above mentioned.

Their god, whom they called Bull-an, lived across the sea, in the Aborigines’ heaven. After death
their spirits cross the sea, and on arrival at the other side they find a bridge, which they cross, and
then dive down through a tunnel, at the end of which is a fiery mountain. They pas[...]

JerraThurawaldtheri

{The following story was originally published by A.Mackenzie (1874, p.255). The scene of the
legend is at Bendthualaly, between Parry’s Meadows and the Kangaroo Ground}

He got the mullet from the river, took it up to Kangargraon.

He met the woman coming from Kangargraon with poorawang (samia nuts, or native arrowroot).
They fetched the poorawang, they talked to that dog.

They said "where have you come from?"

''I am bringing mullet from the river."

That will do.

The women corrobory gesticulating with the left hand.

They fall dead.

This was at Be ndthualaly.

The Nut Gatherers

{The following story in verse was originally published by A.Mackenzie (1874, p.257). The scene is
Bendthualaly, located between Parry’s Meadows and the Kangaroo Ground}

From the mountain the nutters fruit-laden come back, with a fish twixt their teeth; meet the dog on
the track.

"Now whence come you, Warragul, tell us we pray?"

"From the river below I have come all the way.

"A mullet to take to Kangargraon thought,[...]far on my journey have brought."

Enough? through the frame of his hearers there steals

Subtle poison the blood, flesh, and bone that congeals.

Wil[...]

Every fibre benumbed, a last effort to make

The spell that is freezing all motion to break,

For dance of defiance, they raise the left arm,
Outstretched, the leg stiffens, too strong is the charm.
They stagger; the purawang poised on each head,

Falls split to the ground as the bearerfalls dead.

At Bendthualaly they lie side[...]y may be seen, with their nuts round them strewn

The Purungalailoula all turned to stone.

[According to Mackenzie, ‘Kangargraon’ is the native name for Kangaroo Ground]

HOW the Pheasant and Eel

went to Didthul (the Pigeon-house Hill)

{The following story was recorded by Andrew Mackenzie (1874, pp.260—1) from Thooritgal, an
Aborigine of the Ulladulla tribe}
Men (or kurrakurria, sort of little birds) were playing.

The eel starts out of a hole. They ran down to spear him. Went all the way to Pundutba. Thence to
Pulinjera. Thence all the way to Moruya, found the deep water. Then all the men and women went

along the bank, all the way to Biriry and Yirikul.
News went over then to Mirroo, where the two Jea (fishing hawk).

Then those two went thence up to the sky. Then those two saw the fish; then those two stuck the
spear into him. Then went into the water, then up the beach, fetched out the eel.

Men and women were glad, took the eel then and roasted him.
They slept, the eel was burning.

The pheasant came and put him in the jukulu (bark off the excrescence of a tree, used as a vessel
for holding honey or other food), took the eel out of the fire, and carried it away to Didthul.

The men and women got up.

They fought for that fish. The pheasant cut off the eel’s head and stuck it up, then called it Didthul.

The Lyre Bird

{The following story from the Moruya area was initially recorded by C. Stowe (M[...]een watching for his chance, came within sight
of the camp.

The wives saw this stranger, and so that he could not camp too near them they sent the little girl
with a light to make a fire for him w[...]eemed very grateful, but presently pretended that the ants annoyed him, so that he
could get no rest, so the girl moved the fire a little nearer to her mother's camp. First[...]d nearer, and nearer, until he was quite close to the
women’s camp.

Watching his chance, he sprang upon the two women, and with his waddy knocked them
sensel[...]ines which was fastened to a
stringy bark tree at the top of the cliff.

In their rocky prison the two women were kept and cruelty treated. Sometime[...]m watch for a chance to escape. At last it came.

The man forgot to draw up his ladder after him. The two women used it to get to the top, where
they hid themselves in the scrub until the man returned. As soon as he had gone down to his camp
they drew up the rope, leaving him with no means of escape.

He begged them to let down the rope, but they only taunted him all the time, talking as hard as
they could at him.

When[...]together heaps of sticks and
stones, uttering all the most doleful cries. Cries which are heard today in the sweet notes of the
Lyrebird, whose haunts are in those Southern Moun[...]as into a Lyrebird that this man
was changed. And the Aborigines say they have seen his old camp in a range on the south bank of
the Moruya, between Wambean and Kulwarry.

Mulgani

{The following story of a journey by a family from Two[...]W. Peck’s Australian Legends (1933, pp.208-14). The original narrator is not designated,
though it wa[...]It
may be called a type story. Just what is said the people thought was really thought by many, and
just what is said the imagined people did was really done by many.

In[...]le. These groups thought themselves a family, and the names they had were
family names. We whites call just a father and mother and their children a family. The Aborigines
considered that all children belonged as much to all the uncles and aunts and cousins as to the
actual father and mother, and uncles and aunts were those men and women whose brothers and
sisters the actual father and mother might have married, seeing that they belonged to the proper
totems. So their idea of family was much w[...]ani was a Katungal. Her people lived away down on the South Coast of New South Wales, at
Twofold Bay.[...]were just circles cut right round it, and between
the circles little cuts were made that looked like four-legged stools. Then again there were spots or
dots. The marks were a strange written language, for they could be deciphered by a few men of
the people wherever the stick was shown.

To be a messenger was no easy t[...]intentions understood, and
before he could reach the readers of whatever tribe or group he wished to visit, he ran the risk of
being misunderstood and perhaps speared.[...]waited quietly, generally sitting on a log or on the ground. Then when
he was seen he threw his spears to the ground. After being received he was allowed to go back
and recoverthe spears.

No one of the visited people was ever known to steal suc[...]

Now her father was very fond of flowers. He had made many trips to the mountains that lie away to
the west of Twotold Bay - the Muniong Range we call them - and he had seen all the trees and
shrubs and plants of the bush. He had picked some and had brought them back to Mulgani's
mother before Mulgani was born, and the mother wished that she could go to the mountains and

get some for herself.

And now this messenger had come with the message—stick to tell the Katungals about the big
ceremony, and although Mulgani was only a few days old, the father and mother intended to go to

it.

But the father had to attend a night school [initiation c[...]typhelia berries or Geebungs (called Persoonia by the botanists) and
Astrolomas or Ground berries. Thes[...]be neglected, and there were certain ways for all the people to live, and those ways were taught
them at the proper corroborees. If they were not treated corr[...]f magic being
in them.

Of course we can see that the magic was only the poison that so many fruits have, and which is
nul[...]primitive people with no
sense nor reason at all. The people were primitive, but they had sense and kno[...]ught and custom.

No doubt some time away back in the ages a black man was made sick by eating the green
geebung, and that happening was ascribed si[...]f magic. Why, see this: - Only a little while ago I heard a woman - a white
woman - say that waratahs should not be kept in the house because they brought bad luck. What
is that[...]e unlucky, no one ever
died, or was made sick, by the waratah. There is no basis for the idea. Then that white woman was
far more ignorant than the blacks in that respect. That some flowers do make us sick is well known.
If we do not call the reason magic, then it is because we have found out that it is the
superabundance of pollen that is the cause of the sickness. The wattle flower is one of those in
which there is d[...]tiny Mulgani’s father was very anxious to go to the school, and he was very pleased when
he found that the king [tribal elder] had ordered such a school to be held. Everyone of the group
that lived around Twotold Bay could attend.

Many schools were secret, and only the teachers and the special scholars and those who had
already[...]

All the schools were termed by white people "corroborees,[...]too, and they also are called corroborees.

After the school those who were to travel to the great ceremony set out.

The way was long and in places difficult. Mulgani was often carried by one or other of her aunts.
Sometimes the party was right on the beach, sometimes on the sandhills and sometimes in the
scrub. But never did they go too far from the sight and the sound of the waves.

On the sandhills there were very pretty flowers - the Mesembryanthemum, a very brilliant and
dainty vine - and just at the bases the big yellow Hibbertia, and gleaming purple masses of
Hardenbergia.

The Malelucas were in blossom and the sweet scent that they give out was a great pleasure to the
travellers, though of course Mulgani was fartoo young to notice such a thing as that.

They came to the Shoalhaven River. The party travelled up it on the high rocky sides for many
miles. Then they came a[...]ifferent group.
Here they were welcomed and given the best of food. it was better than any they had got[...]this camp Mulgani’s fatherwent out and gathered the Styphelia berries and the
Astrolomas, and what he did not cook he put in the dilly bag that was carried by his wife.

It was delightful to see how the wallabies were cooked and how the best parts were given to those
who should by right of birth or age have them.

The travellers stayed there for about a week, and during that time every day Mulgani was put on
the ground out in the sun. She was quite happy, and her father and mother showed with pride that
she was now all black.

Many of the people of this group joined the travellers. They had heard of the intended ceremony
and the summons and were awaiting the coming of this party.

Soon they came to the country of the tall, swaying cabbage—pa|ms and the staghorns and the
treeferns [lllawarra].

Many of the big detached rocks had the dendrobiums with their long creamy fronds of flowers, and
the sweet scent was better by far than that of the tea-trees they had passed through, for the flower
of the Dendrobium speciosum is more sweetly scented than[...]er, one other that must be mentioned here, though the travellers did not see
it. It is the Symphyonema paludosum. It grows only in swampy places, and such swamps do not
occur anywhere along the route taken, though they are not very far away for they are on top of the
range under which the ceremony took place.

In another week the party reached the spot and they found a big gathering of people. Some had
come from over the range.

There were fires and smoke and feasting and singing and the beating of drums. There were
corroborees, some of them, such as dances, for the whole of the gathering; and there were those
secret ones for only the special people.

Mulgani was a toddler bef[...]

What Makes The Waves
(Arrilla of Northern Illawarra)

{The following story of the Coalcliff - Stanwell Park area is taken from Peck (1933, pp.108-21) and
is the only record we possess of the people of this part of lllawarra. The narrator was possibly Ellen

Anderson of lllawarra}

Arrilla was of the Kamilaroi.

He lived principally on the coast, not far from our present village of Coal C[...]ibed to him in this legend is what happened under the circumstances delineated. The story
was told as being of one particular man, and yet there is that in the telling of it that seems to
indicate a wish to show tradition rather than tell of the actual doings of one person.

He was the cleverest of his tribe. He was not afraid of the sea.

He roamed as he willed over his country, and even when enemies appeared on the top of the
range and a hurried council was called by the King, Arrilla did not hasten to obey the summons if
he happened to be studying the inhabitants of the sea, or the denizens of the creeks that came
clattering down the slopes and spread out into beautiful lagoons on thethe limitless expanse of Pacific Ocean.

He never dar[...]a summoned council altogether.

One morning when the sun shone calmly and clearly down through the blue, and the mountain
was purpled, and the lower slopes were deep green and dark with the jungle, and the strip of
undulating land that lay between it and the beach was bright with the semi-tropical verdure such as
the tamarind, and the Archontophoenix and Livistona palms, and the giant Alsophila ferns -
Cooperi and australis - and the promontories stood with their shaggy westringias[...]ers all aglow, staring, staring, staring out over the blue
lazy ocean, and casting blue and purple shadows across the yellow sand of the beach, even
reaching to the masses of white foam that were swept ashore, when the little breakers were
dashed to pieces, the enemy was seen on the top, above the dark wall of ironstone, right out on
the edge, waving spears, and he was heard shouting to the family of Arrilla down on the beach.

The voice carried far.

Aborigines could be heard at[...]en miles. They made hollows with their hands, and
the coo—ee that rang through them was a wonderfully penetrating and floating call.

The King was young. It was not long since his father was laid in the shallow grave that was
scooped out in a grass-grown sandhill. The spears were buried with him. They put him sitting with
his face towards the mountain and his knees doubled up to his chin and[...]es still sat and beat their breasts in grief, and the blood that ran from the cuts they
made in their thighs was dried on their legs, for they would not wash it off for three moons.

The young King was as stern as his father had been. H[...]rilla delayed, he ordered two strong men
to go to the lagoon and seize him.

Arrilla asked to be allowed to speak, and the permission being given, he drew himself erect and
waited until he saw the expectancy of the warriors of the family was beginning to make them
impatient. Then he pointed to the highest spot on the range.

He told them that in his wanderings there he had seen a spirit. The spirit was not friendly to him,
but would be good to any stranger who came over the range at that point. He said that the enemy
that then stood on the very spot was receiving his courage from that spi[...]organised battle. it was by strategy, and he was the only

fighting man of the family who possessed the cunning.

And in that way Arrilla tried to palliate the King and to escape the opprobrium that always attached
itself to those who disobeyed or were dilatory in answering a call to the councils or an order of the
King.

But this time the King was not convinced. He said that the meeting was to be adjourned until night
came, and[...]ken. There was, he said, no immediate
danger from the enemy above. If he were prepared to fight he would have been down before, said
the King. He was only seeking to make the people below too angry to fight, and then he might
bring his forces down and get the gain he was after.

So the meeting broke up. Arrilla was free. That much he[...]he had always before been successful in placating the King, this time he was in
deep disfavour and perh[...]llows think he had had communion with a spirit on the top of
the range, and with them that belief gave him a great[...]hat they were no very great amount different from the white people.

Arrilla went to the wurley of his wife, and for a little while he played with his two children. Then he
looked into the dilly-bag, and finding that there was not much in[...]y.

Taking up a spear and a shield he strode into the scrub. There was, at first, a thick tangle of
bor[...]k and tall, Chorizema and snake
vine, Bauera with the always blooming pink flowerets, and Tetratheca, with the layer of tangled
twigs, made the going difficult. Prickly wild raspberries made the way even more hard for him.

Then he entered the dark jungle itself. It was a mass of myrtles interwoven with the rubus and
flowering tecoma and clematis. These vines lay thick on the top of lantana, and through them grew
up the Lillypilli and Rapanea and the fluffy-flowered Callicoma. Xylomelum pyriforme or[...]with their wooden fruit and unpleasant odour, and the Goodenia ovata with its dark serrated
leaves and yellow flowers and the Pittosporum and Sassafras were all clasped together and held
close by native jasmine, and up through it all the cabbage and bangalow palms and the Eucalyptus
microcorys or tallow wood and the Swamp Mahogany or robusta of the eucalyptus genus stood
into the humid air.

Big cold boulders were lying under the deep shade of the scmb and ferns and the clustered true
and false sarsaparilla, and they w[...]bird's nest fern.

It was always dark in there.

The lyre—bird darted under the thick moss and the carpet of Randia and tiny wild violets overlaid
with the tough and thick leaved Smilax australis. lts nest was placed on a flat ledge of the biggest

Right in front the mountain reared, still clothed with the jungle, with giant rocks fast to the sides,
and the vines, especially the tough monkey vines, clinging to big gums - the turpentine, the
wolly-butt, and the spotted gum and the wild fig with its mass of roots between which men[...]wallabies often had their lairs.

Arrilla sought the wallaby. The rufus—necked scrub variety was in plenty here.[...]ke a beautiful wonga pigeon, and he whistled
like the king parrot, and those birds came to what they su[...]on had a fine collection of game for his food and the meat of his family. He was a snake
man and only reptiles were tabu to him.

it grew night again. The rest of his people were scattered about on the clearer and lighter land,
nearer the beach - some idling and some fashioning weapons.[...]trings attached and they could be fastened

round the neck of the mother.

A few had made a poison from the acacia for their fishing,and yet others were wading in pools in
the rocks seeking mussels and shell-fish. Beyond, the lazy sea just heaved and sparkled and sent
its messengers of breakers to be broken on the sand.

By this time a black band had spread along the horizon, for night was approaching.
What had become of the gesticulating blackfellow on the top of the range no one knew.

No cooking fires were lighted. Little heaps of sticks lay about - all gathered by the fathers and the
children. Suitable stones were collected too, but the order had gone out that everyone must eat
either raw or cold food, and a big council would be held on the low, flat, grassy patch down near
the lagoon.

Only after nightfall did the sea begin to moan. The little crash of the breaking waves in the daytime
was quite cheerful, but in the darkness it seemed to ring with a different tone - one of sadness and
pessimism.

The council sat in the dark. Only the fighting men and the priests were in it after all.

Arrillawasthere.

The discussion did not last long, and it all centred upon the tale that Arrilla had told. He was a
frightened Arrilla when he found that he was expected to climb to the highest point of the range
and ask questions of the spirit to whom he said he had spoken.

He dared not disobey.

When the meeting was over and the men had retired to their wurlies and theirfamilie[...]soon as it was light. He determined not
to go by the way he had gone before. He would go a long way ro[...]sy to climb and which would allow him to approach the
enemy by a flanking manoeuvre, and then he could spy upon him and perhaps use his spear. So in
the morning he said ‘good-bye’ to his wife, and having received a sacred stone from the priest for

He went to the rock on which was the lyre-bird's nest, and then turning to the right he passed close
to a giant nettle tree and a Stenocarpus, and that way the going was easy. He was still under the
big trees and hidden from anyone’s sight unless someone were very close.

The scent of the dendrobiums came to him, and as he passed lilly-pillies he broke off a few clusters
of the white and juicy fruit and ate them. He picked up[...]ious black apples, and here
and there he gathered the little red berries of the Rubus parvifolius. The wild rasberry he made a
detour for, but it was not growing in that part. Occasionally he tore up a leaf from the bird’s-nest
fern and at the end is a crisp and succulent part which he chewed.

He reached the upper part of the creek that formed the lagoon down below on the beach, and as
he was gradually ascending the lower slope and using the maximum of precaution, he came to a
spot high on the mountain side from which he could look out through the branches and over the
heads of the tall shrubs and high gums to the sea.

The sun was well up and the morning was becoming. The sea was still lazy though a little glitter on
its[...]ernible. Then he turned
his back to that view and the climb proper commenced.

It was steep. He hoisted himself by grasping the stems of the callicomas and the rapaneas and the
myrtles that grew sparsely here, and sometimes he[...]quite alone, he was not anxious to lose time; yet the temptation to swing on the monkey vine
was too strong, and finding one that[...]shed himself off
with his feet. Out he swung over the steep side and above the undergrowth and through the lesser
limbs of the Pittosporium that grew just beneath, and then he had a clear and uninterrupted sight
of the country at the base, and of the beach and the sea. The vine gave a little twist and returned,
and the swing was exhilarating.

But he only did it once, and letting the vine go he faced the escarpment and went on with his
climb. He secured precarious footing on the stones and exposed roots and in the moss.
Sometimes a loosened stone went bounding and crashing down until it struck the foot of a tree
and lodged there.

Arrilla now looked up. He had reached a spot where the big trees did not grow, and the only
verdure was rock fern and dianella rush with[...]and yellow flowers and its blue fruit.

Above him the blue sky was unclouded and a great lazy sea—eag[...]enely.

He had disturbed many birds in his climb. The coach-whip had darted from him. The wonga
pigeon and the little brown fantail and the woodpeckers and the honey-eaters and the diamond
sparrows and white-eyes and silver-eyes a[...]by. Satin birds and
cat-birds and parrots sat in the branches or darted through them as he passed under, and in the
wild figtrees the beautiful flock and topknot pigeons clattered and[...].

This fire-tree is a brachychiton, and it is of the same genus as the Queensland bottle-tree. It sheds
its leaves and its brilliant flame-like flowers covers the twigs and blaze out before any of the new
season's leaves come. It is rightly named ‘[...]it ‘f|ame—tree,' and
apply this name also to the Erythrina or coral tree of Queensland.

He was in the narrow cleft, between the sides of which the water raced in rain—time, and he was
nearthe top.

When he reached it, and before he had climbed over the ledge, he was in a bracing upper air. The
verdure, he could see as he peered, was different. The Epacris and the boronia pinnata and
Boronia serrulata and also St[...]ew flowers.

On damp and mossy and heathy patches the Blandfordia bloomed. On drier parts the false
sarsaparilla or hardenbergia monophylla clambered over the stones and boulders and clefts, and
hung its bloo[...]and there a yellow Podolepis acuminata glowed and the
white fur from the stems was detached and lay on the ground. Box-trees and stunted Banksia
serrata, an[...]Mustering all his caution Arrilla advanced along the edge of the mountain.

Heath abounded, hard rock-fern cluster[...]ers, and here and there rising through them stood the gorgeous crimson waratah.

As Arrilla quietly crept along the ledge he could see down over the verdure to his people near the
beach, and he noted that many were looking anxiously in the direction of the point on which he
had seen the enemy native the day before. He had all their love for the representative flower of his
race - the waratah - and he plucked one in order to render h[...]should that
occur.

Suddenly he cast himself into the rigid statuesque figure of a man.

He heard the breaking of twigs and the foot-tall of someone. He moved not a muscle. His spears
were in the hand that held the shield.

The noise ceased. Then the air darkened. There were no clouds, but a great deep shade spread all
overthe earth.

Arrilla looked to the sun. It was disappearing. He grew mightily afraid[...]spirit up there,
and this terrible fading out of the sunlight came to show that he was even then trespassing on the
country of it. The place surely was sanctuary and tabu. So making the sign with his hand that he
had seen the priests make he softly whispered a magic word.

The strange shade grew rapidly deeper and then Arrill[...]at him fixedly.

Arrilla made a friendly sign and the other advanced. He was an utter stranger but his[...]is story was along one.

He had never before seen the sea, and he did not know what it was. He believed[...]nd it there was a very bad country.

He said that the sky had fallen down and that it was slowly creeping on and on and eventually
would cover the whole world. In his country he had heard some such tale about it.

it was that a great ancestor had left the earth and had gone up into the sky. He went so fast that he
drove right through it and he had seen the very bad country that is beyond it. He tried to return but
the hole that he had made was closed up. Yet h[...]

He had heard all these things and he had determined to see for himself, and that is why he had
made the journey in the direction his people had pointed out as the one where the great sky lay.

Arrilla was delighted to hear this story. Though he had been born near the sea and lived there all
his life he had no story of what it is, or how it comes to be there, nor why the waves beat on the

shore.

He advised the strange man to wait until he had gone back and communicated the news to his
people, and said that when the signal tire was made he might come down and be received by the
King. But Arrilla told him to say that a spirit gave him all this information about the sea and the
waves, and that while it was being told Arrilla was present.

Both forgot their fears of the strange darkness that had come over, and down bel[...]d it. They thought it was because Arrilla had met the spirit and was talking to
it, and as the shade passed and the sun came out bright again and the gladness that is usual to the
sunshine spread again all were in high glee. Ther[...]they said, and Arrilla would
return with news and the spirit he had seen and spoken with would assist t[...]Arrilla joined his people again, having come down the way he went up, and he told the
story of the sea as he had heard it from the stranger, though he said it was told him by the spirit.

Fires were lighted, and when the man came to them he said he was very hungry, and he told the
story just as Arrilla had. A wife was found for him from amongst the women-girls and he lived there
for the rest of his days with that family.

The sea grew rough and the wind blew, and he said that he had heard that that was the impatience
of the sea. It was angry and impatient because of the great delay occasioned by the ancestor who
refused to let it go back to where it had fallen from.

The roar is the voice of the ancestor who always refuses to go back. When the calm came again it
was because the sea was worn out and very tired, but nothing could stop it from ever creeping
further and further over the land. The winds, he said, were the spirit friends of the sea, and they
tried to assist it to regain the place that it had lost.

The Kamilaroi people always believed that the day would come when the sky would go back and
the earth would be quite dry and life could not exist, but they were not afraid, for they said that the
day was yet a long way off.

[The phenomena of ‘the sky falling down’ was common amongst the Aborigines of south-eastern

Australia and is said to be associated with theThe following Appin / Maddens Plains story is taken f[...]rm. A legend has already
been written in which is the thought that Blackfellows often slipped during their journey along the
Milky Way through Magel|an’s Clouds, and[...]

world. Yet by inadvertence this was often done.

Aborigines were generally much frightened when the mists came, and they often crouched in the
shelter of a crevasse or camp until they had cleared away. They feared the unseen, and they could
not conjecture what fearsome thing‘ might be hidden. They watched the curling, eddying vapour,

and their imaginative a[...]a place where this particular mist often covered the country.

No doubt the fact that volcanoes emitted fire and steam is res[...]has
become somewhat distorted in its passage down the ages since Canobolas in New South Wales
and Mount[...]n South Australia threw out their
molten masses.

The strip of country between the Appin Creek and Georges River was the home of a very powerful
group. Today the watershed drained by the Cataract and the Loddon rivers is one source of

Sydney's Water Supply.

The head of Georges River is in the same locality, but it falls the opposite way and its waters do not
flow into the Cataract Dam. On it are King's Falls; on the Loddon the Loddon Falls; on the other
creek the Appin Falls. All are most picturesque, though the Appin Falls are now quite governed by
the floodgates of the Dam.

The real owners of this country roamed over the luxuriant forest. In our time the village of
Sherbrooke was built there and Frank Knight's sawmill is responsible for the destruction of the
beautiful woods.

The natives travelled the peaty patch known to us as Madden's Plains in the days of their mastery,
and from the edge of the lllawarra Range they saw the sight that we recognise as the most
beautiful in the whole world. When they roamed towards the setting sun they went as far as the
Nepean, which winds itself along the foot of the hills of the Blue Mountains.

Madden's Plains is the country of many mists. It was somewhere there tha[...]in
jaunty fashion just as if he did not care, but the old women ceased their Iamentations and
commenced[...]ther young men took sides with their comrade, and the whole camp would have been
involved had not the undertakers come to bear away the body to its resting-place.

The spirit had gone. The Milky Way seemed to be closer than usual, and in the morning the whole
country was enveloped in a thick mist. It swung up from the jungle at the foot of the range and
swept by over the plains and the creeks and the scrub, and must have been lost in the clouds that
surely hovered on the crests of the Blue Mountains.

No one stirred from the camp. But the women had not spent their desire to scold the man whom
they knew was too callous to feel the death of his father. And he, of all people, ventured forth into
the mist. He had had enough of the tongues of the old mourners.

He plucked a little stalk that bore several of the pretty violet flowers, and for want of something[...], he sat beside a log and quietly and deftly tore
the edge of the petals, making them nicely fringed.

Slowly the mist rolled away, and in its billowings was to be seen the form of a man. A short
distance off he appeared a[...]e more swallowed up by another wave. By this time
the sorrowing women saw him and in frightened whispers they told the people. Then break after
break occurred in the driven mist, and gradually the sun came through it. A short time after it had
gathered itself together and had gone away, and the country was clear and crisp and damp, and
the sunlight was warm. And slowly approaching up from the creek we call Muddy Creek was a
man. He had the form and the voice of the one for whom the women were grieving. His hands he
carried behind his back.

Without a word he strode slowly to the young man, who still sat tearing the violet flowers. Of all the
people he was the only one who was blind to thethe natives.

Suddenly the hands came from behind the back and a nullah was swung down upon the head of
the youth. Because the flower had three petals the spirit-man struck that many blows.

There were three marks on the youth's head. The flower fell to the ground, and because it was
damp and warm the seeds soon germinated and the resultant flowers had fringed petals.

It is a li[...]that it was ever called a
violet.

It is said by the blacks that it only opens in a mist, and that before the mist clears away the spirit of
the slain youth has to tear every petal and make them fringed. The three blows are perpetuated in
the wale or bruise-like mark on every petal.

It is s[...]ifulflower.

There is a rather pretty story about the fringed gum-blossom, and in it is a reference to a sea and
an island in the centre of Australia.

The First Crayfish

{The following Shoalhaven story of the origin of the red yabbie - or crayfish - is taken from Peck
(1925. PD.93-6)}

Perhaps no white man, hunter or fisher, was so clever at catching any sort of game as the blacks,
and probably no blacks, not even the red men of America, were so painstaking in their[...]n-wait as those of our land. Clever writers about the Reds of the West
have told how they tracked, yet not one story shows a bushcraft equal to that of the Australian
Aborigine.

This story deals with the catching of fish. No lines, no hooks, just rush n[...]apart
from spearing, and that was done only when the fish was big; and mostly on the coast.

Of all the fishers of the Shoalhaven tribe none was so clever as a c[...]

The camp was a permanent one. Its location was somewhere near where the bridge to Nowra now
is. High rocks sheltered it from a southerly wind, and a deep forest prevented the westerlies from
reaching it.

Krubi caught fish o[...]ands. She simply used a bait of meat (too bad, by the way, for us
to have handled), and this she hung between her own shapely black feet. When the fish were
ravenously battling for the food, Krubi simply drew the bait up and up. But this ‘simply’ was just the
requisite thing, and therein do we whites fail. B[...]owers have given us means whereby we can catch as the black could not; though they caught
plenty fortheir needs.

Slowly but surely Krubi drew the bait. The movement was so uniform that not a tremor disturbed
the meat, and not a ripple appeared in the water. Then Krubi’s supple arm straightened. The hand
entered the water wonderfully cleanly, and it was gently lowered with the long black fingers
hollowed. But when those finge[...]ape for it. Quick as a flash it
was drawn up, and the dexterous toss that landed it on the bank was extremely clever.

The men of the tribe made bark boats. They carved a great elipse of bark from the Turpentine
(Eucalyptus eugenioides), and certain gums such as the Eucalyptus resinifera, and wrenched it
free witho[...]et never did they ring a tree, for they knew that the bush of Australia
was their living. They then caught the ends - two men to one piece - and rapidly see-sawed it over
a smoking fire. The best smoke was that made by throwing the river oak (Casuarina fraseriana) and
the wild cherry (Ca||itris calcarata) on the fire.

When it had been smoked sufficiently they placed a heavy log in the centre, the smooth side of the
sheet of bark being uppermost, and bent it to form the sides and gunwale. The ends were easily
drawn together with rawhide or sinews of the kangaroo. Then the tiny crack was caulked with
rushes and mud, and a[...]es and thwarts bound with rawhide were fixed, and the whole craft was constructed
in less than three hours.

Krubi stood by one day watching the boat builders, and as she had become noted for he[...]t fishing she was allowed to show her interest in the work.

Immediately the boat was launched she sprang lightly into it.

The other women of the tribe were aghast; never did they dare to enter a boat uninvited. But the
men seemed pleased to allow Krubi to take advantage of the admiration so plainly bestowed upon
her, and they set off down the river in great glee.

Somewhere near its mouth was a deep hole, and there the yabbies were unusually big. When this
place was reached and the boat was beached and the men set to work to fashion a net.

Krubi remained in the craft and tried for yabbies. She had the usual piece of putrid meat, and
breaking a part off she tied it to the end of a long stick. This she put into the water close to the big
stones, and when it was bristling with yabbies she drew them, clinging to the bait, right out into the
boat.

Catching the yabbies was easy work. But in one haul there came up one bigger than all the rest.
Amongst the yabbies he was a giant. Krubi faltered when she p[...]nd a little spine on
its head pricked her finger. The warm blood flowed upon the wet fish and it spread all over him.

This warm b[...]blood. And this one, being so big, jumped high in the air and landed with a big splash in
the river. With great kicks he drove himself through the water, every now and them giving himself a
mighty shake to try to throw off the warm liquid that was so strange to him.

On and on he went down to the sea. The black man heard the splash and asked Krubi what had
caused it.

Krubi excitedly told the story and showed her wounded finger.—

Shortly after the net was set the people decided to pull further - to sail right into the sea should the
weather be calm and the water smooth.

it was.

They went right round the point and into the sheltered cove, and there they hove to. Krubi was
gazing over the side when, what did she esp)’, but the big, red yabbie! However in a moment he
had disap[...]aften/vards fishermen of her tribe rowed round to the spot, but it was not for some
years that anyone s[...]ty.

Krubi had grown middle-aged and had given up the pranks that she indulged in when young. One
day a[...]d it was with intense delight that he hastened to the camp
to show his motherthe wonder.

She spat her[...]It certainly was red, but it was too small to be the one that had
escaped covered with the pretty Krubi’s blood those years ago! There mus[...]been brought into being. These we call crayfish.

The Legend of the Lyrebird and the Kookaburra

{The following lllawarra and Shoalhaven story of the Lyrebird (Pheasant) and the Kookaburra
(Laughing Jackass), is extracted from Peck (1925, pp.113-6)}

....It was one of those wonderful a[...]sses of
cumulus cloud which part at times to show the turquoise of the heavens above the beautiful district
of lllawarra.

The black man was of the Shoalhaven River. He had roamed as he willed between that pellucid
stream and the point at which the lllawarra Range peters out and drifts into the sea above our
Stanwell Park.

Under the Range the air is subtropical, and the strip of undulating land, scalloped by bays and
f[...]e a long
line of monstrous sentries gazing out on the blue of snow-edged sea, breathe the moistened heat
of the Isles of the Blest. Waterfalls poured over the ironstone of the mountains, and then leaped
down into the fastnesses amid the ferns and jungled scrub.

He had trapped pigeons and snared wallabies. He had fished in the streams where, on the flats
near the beaches, they spread into little lakes and lost themselves in the sand, excepting in
floodtime, when they broke through the bar and poured into the foam.

He had stood on the rocks with poised spear and waited to see the rock-cod and the groper and
the eel in the salty pools, and then the swift stick clove the water and the struggling fish was
landed.

He had climbed to the top of the long level range and had gazed down and over the glory of the
"Garden of New South Wales"!

He had sheltered underthe gunyah, roofed with the broad hands of the cabbage-palm, and he had
ornamented his frail house with the frond of the bangalow.

He had climbed the tamarind tree and tasted the bitter sweet of the little yellow fmit.
He saw more of the real beauty of his district than any of the rest of his tribe.

Often at Kiama, before the name was given - ages before - he had stood and been drenched by the
spray that flashed up out of the Blow Hole high into the air, spreading as it went, and falling back
into the shaft from which it was dashed.

He knew that he was most favoured of all the blacks of Australia, for he had the right of birth to the
most beautiful piece of all the land, and he was endowed with the vision that saw and knew.
Therefore, he wandered so much alone.

He had his affinity among the lesser animals. It was the lyre bird.

He had secured its confidence and its[...]o evil thing could break an affinity. No power of the malevolent
could pierce the enveloping mantle that was invisibly about him as[...]oastful of its powers, and gradually he
wore away the confidence it reposed in him.

Other birds came to be fed from his hand. They, seeing the good things that came to the lyre bird,
sought a share, and they crowded round[...].

So he arranged a match.
He told all birds that the best of their singing could be excelled by his ly[...]good to hear them.

But after each had finished, the dainty-stepping lyre bird came fon/vard and gave voice to the same
song in more beautiful and certainly more po[...]ing to them all. As each was beaten it retired to the dense scrub, and though it never
entirely gave up[...]ng approached it flew away. It
does so now.

Only the magpie cared not if it were outclassed. So in these days the magpie sings in spite of all,
and its voice has improved. But the lyre bird is as successful as the magpie.

One bird was not tested. He sat stolidly by and cocked his head this way and that as he listened to
the competitions. His boldness increased, and as he was not asked to join in he believed that it
was because the man and the lyre bird feared him.

So he dashed his strong beak against the bough to attract attention. It was like the breaking of a
strong stick by a jumping kangaroo.

The Aborigine looked up, and as he did the bird laughed in his face.

Immediately aftenrvards the round eyes lost their gleam of fun and the beak was skewed sideways
and the big clumsy bird pretended to fall from his perch.

The lyre bird gave his own call only.

Then the kookaburra (for the untested bird was none other) showed what he could really do. He
laughed in one voice, and just as the lyre bird essayed to copy him he broke into a different key
and laughed again. Again the lyre bird tried his prowess, but once more the voice of the
kookaburra was put into still another register, and off he went again. The lyre bird managed the first
laugh pretty well, but before he had concluded the laugh the voice of the kookaburra had
concluded the laugh the voice of the kookaburra changed again, and a different toned laugh rang
out.

The struggle went on until sundown, and then the lyre bird gave it up. Old jackass settled himself[...]id he laugh his laughs all over.

They rang above the trees and over the streams and up and along the mountain-side. They filled
the valleys and soared over the undulations and reached the beaches, and were not whelmed until
the big waves enveloped them and swallowed them up in the roar of their own as they broke to
pieces on the coast.

Long ere this the lyre bird had slipped into his dark runnel under the mosses and the ferns, and
that is why today the laugh of the jackass is the only sound the lyre bird cannot copy in its entirety.
He starts it. He nearly gets to the end of the first laugh, and then he gives it up and sinks down and
out until in a murmur he relinquishes the endeavour.

This is the quaint story of the pheasant and the jackass.

Two Waratah Legends

(The Black Snake Totem)

{The following Burragorang Valley / lllawarra story is taken from Peck (1933, pp.199-201). The
narrator was possibly Ellen Anderson}

There are many legends concerning the waratah - Australia's most glorious flower and all her own,
for it does not occur in any other part of the world, while its supposed rival, the wattle, is as
common in all parts of the Southern Hemisphere as it is in Australia.

The Aborigines wove some very pretty and fanciful stories about their prettiest bloom. Most of
them come from the Burragorang Valley, though at least one must have[...]om very far west,
for in this story lies enclosed the fact that the waratah did in early tertiary times flourish in Western
Australia.

This story is one of the making of the waratah red. It was supposed, it seems, that it w[...]a
white flower, though that idea does not pervade the other stories of it. Still it was loved then just[...]nd its whiteness did not detract from its charm.

The day was away back in the alcheringa and it had been very still and very hot, and the whole
tribe, with the exception of one man, lay amongst the bracken in the shade of big eucalypti and
lesser myrtles and other scrub. The sweet-scented Sassafras grew there, too, and that other
perfumed shrub, the Olearia or Musk, and without a doubt the exquisite Ceratopetalum or
Christmas Bush,[...]

The spot was at the foot of very high bouldered cliffs that bounded a deep, clear-pooled river, and
the one man who was not prostrate was fishing. All this was in a valley, and out from it the land was

a parched and barren tract.

The sun blazed down and the heat dazzled, and the sandy and graveled ground was too hot to
walk upon.

Now not a zephyr moved in the air. The season must have been spring, for the waratah blooms
only in that season, always waiting until the cold of winter has retreated to the Pole to which it
belongs, or to the regions above the clouds.

Most of the people were asleep. They had retired to the shade. They knew that great cumulus
clouds would at length appear from beyond the west and that most surely they would bring
thunde[...]black, for
Aboriginal babies were born brown, and the black of them showed first under their fingernail[...]ng mother or whatever woman had charge of it, and
the dogs were too indolent in the heat to notice it laboriously getting closer and closer to the tangle
of Hibertia, or Guinea-flower vine, through which stood the Waratah plant resplendent with
gleaming white flo[...]lse that gleamed - a watching

black snake.

Now, the child was of the black snake totem, and, being so, the reptile was its guardian, not its
enemy.

As some of our children have done, the little baby put out its hand to play with the usually deadly
thing, and just at that moment the guardian awoke.

She missed the child at once. One hurried glance around and she saw the situation. There was the
baby about to play with a venomous snake. Forgetting that the child was of that totem and that it
would do her[...]bed a nullah and flung it with all her might, and the back of the
snake was broken, and its blood streamed out. The only movement it was then capable of was a
swaying of the forward part, and this part it placed around the baby.

Another missile was thrown, and had the snake not been where it was, the child would certainly
have received the blow and been hurt. The snake was again hit, as it, being the protector of the
child, intended that it should.

Slowly and painfully it unwound itself. The now frightened baby rolled away. The snake laid its
injured self amongst the stalks of the waratah bush, and slowly its blood was absorbed as it

trickled from the wounds.

In a few days streaks of red were to be seen in the flowers, and by degrees the whole of them were
so coloured, and therefore we have the bright and beautiful blooms of far greater quantity than the

white ones.

It is certainly strange that the white waratahs appear to be much older than the usual crimson
ones.

The last full-blooded woman of the Cammaray tribe says that she is a black snake woman and that
the black snake is her guardian. When a baby, her life was saved in a manner somewhat similar to
the way the baby of this story was saved and it always[...]

Another Legend

(The Stars, a Meteor, and Volcanoes)

{The following Burragorang / lllawarra story is taken from Peck (1933, pp.202-3)}

One still, hot day in the alcheringa, the people of a tribe that inhabited the same part of Australia as
those written of in the preceding story were so prostrate with the intense heat as to be unable to
eat.

They lay in whatever of shade they could find and awaited the thunderstorm that sometimes came
on such days and proved their salvation. Without such coolings of the air very few people could
survive. The trees and shrubs were wilting. Eucalypti turned their leaf edges to the sun to save the
blades. Other leaves grew limp. Whatever else of vegetation was there showed the baleful effects
of the extreme temperature. A rocky gully had the waratah, and it, too, was as discomfited as the
rest of the scanty flora.

But no great cumulus clouds rolled up from the west, and the night fell upon a tired earth and a
tired vegetat[...]if their weariness would send them into slumber. The little children were fretful, and the dogs
occasionally hitched themselves closer to so[...]they got a little comfort from such

friendship.

The sun had gone over the horizon a red ball, and flaming streaks seemed to[...]of furnace-like heat to be ready to follow.

Then the sky moved.

In the darkness, with just a shred of the red of the burning west left, and with the stars showing
brightly, and a rising moon putting an inquisitive edge over the haze of the east, the sky heaved
and billowed and tumbled and tottered.

The moon rocked. The stars tumbled and clattered and fell one against the other. The Milky Way -
the ‘pukkan' or track up which departed spirits often reached the world to which they went - also
billowed and it s[...]‘Mage||an’s Clouds.’

These ‘clouds’ to the Aborigines are pitfalls set to trap the unworthy spirit travellers, and are also
places t[...]to assist relatives, orto return in human form.

The great star groups were scattered, and many of them, loosened from their holds, came flashing
to the earth. They were heralded by a huge mass, red and glowing, that added to the number of
falling stars by bursting with a deafen[...]cattering in a million pieces which were molten.

The people were too scared to move. The disturbance continued all night. When the smoke and
the clamour had died away and morning had dawned it was seen that the holes had been burnt
into the earth,and great mounds were formed by the molten pieces, and many caves were made.
The burning was still going on, for molten masses and flame were being belched forth.

Certain of the plants received the red pieces of the bursting masses, and they are the red flowering
ones. The Waratah is one of them.

A Bird Legend

(Totems)

{The following Burragorang / lllawarra story is taken from Peck (1933, pp.197-8)}

The Aborigines sometimes kept birds and animals as pe[...]tances that may be
enquired into it is found that the pet by some mischance or peculiar trait or impuls[...]tayed there. However, this had nothing to do with the belief in an "affinity," nor yet the
belief in and recognition of a "totem". That possibly originated in a knowledge of evolution -in the
settled idea that during the ages everything has changed in form - and no outstanding fact of
Nature escaped being considered the beginning or the dwelling—place of an ancestor or an
originator.

But something of a parody of this fundamental belief is the acceptance of an affinity in the shape of
a bird or an animal that knows of its be[...]of those
of whom it is a family part. In this way the last full-blooded woman of the Cammaray people
believed in the snake. She says that the black snake always indicates to her whether or no[...]lly threatened with great loss and whether or not the
time be propitious forthe doing of any important[...]d tales of warnings shown to her by her affinity. The lyre-bird, she tells, was the
affinity of a man of her people away back in the time before history, and he had one as a pet. He
was very proud of the fact that his bird mimicked so marvelously, and h[...]distinctive call-assembled, and they listened to the lyre-bird not only imitating, but excelling each[...]olately on a limb, apparently taking no
notice of the proceedings; and then, just before dark, it made its effort.

The lyre-bird, nothing loth, imitated it perfectly. But the other bird was not finished. In another key it
performed again, and still in another, until the lyre-bird was bewildered. It failed to follow; therefore
we may now hear the great bird mimic as we stand, say, at Echo Point in the Blue Mountains, or
under the hills of the Snowy or the Cann, going through all its repertoire, imitating[...]ery sound it has ever heard. But when it comes to the laugh of one it fails.

The bird it cannot properly mock is the kookaburra. The lyre-bird man of the story was discredited,
and therefore in later years such men were never of much account in the eyes of their compatriots,
while those of the kookaburra, though it is recognised as an affinit[...]e.

And by some strange coincidence we have taken the kookaburra to our hearts, and we picture him
much more as the bird-representative of Australia than the emu which figures as such officially.

Why the Turtle Has No Tail

(The Journey After Death)

{The following lllawarra story is taken from Peck (1933, pp.33-6). The narrator was probably Ellen
Anderson}

The Australian Aborigines believed that the Milky Way was a ‘pukkan' or track, along which[...]of departed blacks travelled to heaven, and that the dark place that we call Mage||an’s Cloud

was a hole or split that occurred when the universe was frightfully shaken by some mighty
upheaval which gave us many of the wonders of nature, including the brilliant waratah, gorgeous
caves such as Jenolan[...]to travel to a
Promised Land. This riverflowed at the edge of a mighty forest, and beyond a fearful range of huge
jagged mountains, at the nearer foot of which lay an extensive marshy lake, in the centre of which
was an enchanted island.

The natives of South-East Australia were very clear about the picture just described. They said that
not only had some people spoken to returned men who had waded through the lake and been on
the island, and climbed the mountain and nearly reached the river, but they had also had amongst
them at one[...]a
continuous stream of spirits passed that way to the Unseen River.

Two giant trees grew on the bank, and a tortoise lay athwart it. Up to the time of this happening all
tortoises and turtles had long tails. This tortoise reached from the bank just opposite the big trees,
to the other.

On the journey many spirits were supposed to be in some way tempted to do evil, and succumbed
to the temptation; therefore there were some fallings by the way.

Some were kept floundering about in the lake itself, and these congregated on the island until they
had expiated their sins, when they were allowed to go on. Others failed when climbing the
mountain, and there on some barren peak they had to wait, while others remained faithful until
reaching the lower level, and then were in sight of the river. But there was a test forthem. They had
to squeeze between the trunks of the giant trees, and then the bridge they reached was the
tortoise.

Then came a time when many people quite good enough to get into heaven failed to reach the
opposite bank of the river. It was known that they had got between the trees, and then all trace of
them was lost; but one day a man arrived amongst the people who had been remade, and he told
them his experiences.

He said that he had died and reached the tortoise on the unseen river. He stepped upon it, and
was halfway[...]it gave a sly jerk, and he fell off its tail into the river. He was borne along
very swiftly, for it is[...]swimming, some were fishing, some were hiding in the
rushes awaiting ducks. They did not know of his p[...]hed off to their camp.

At last he was swept into the sea, and a giant wave washed him ashore. As soon[...]ed at his chest and felt his back he was aware of the scares that he had borne in his
otherexistence.

He now suggested that when the next great man died — the chief or the doctor or the rainmaker or
the clergyman - his best stone axe be buried with him[...]d and proclaimed that he would undertake to go to the river and
secure the passage of it for all time. He selected some other brave people, and by the aid of his
sorcery he set out on the way of the spirits.

He soon reached the forest, but found it full of the ‘little men of the bush.’ They barred the way of
the party. Try as they would, no passage through the ranks of the ‘little men’ could be made. So
then they turned and followed the flow of the river, and that way no opposition was offered.

They came to a tree even higher than those at the crossing place, and up that the great sorcerer
climbed. From the top of it he could see the spirits stepping on to the tail of the tortoise and being
shaken off. Many of these were taken by the claws of the hind feet of the beast and afterwards

eaten. Others were carried down stream. The shadow of the tree was impenetrable to the ‘little
men,’ and a bright star shed a beam to the tortoise.

The sorcerer saw that he must die before he could pass the little men and he and his party
returned home.

He sharpened again his axe. He put a sharpened bone in the fire, and scraped some of the burnt
part off into his food. Then he died, and as a good spirit he reached the giant trees, and there were
no ‘little men’ t[...]red to
strike.

With a blow of his axe he severed the head from the body, and picking it up he squeezed between
the trees and stepped on to the tail of the tortoise.

When he was about halfway over, just as he had seen it do to the others, and just as the returned
man had told it did to him, it gave a gr[...]ry, and with another great blow of
his axe he cut the tail off.

Quickly rushing to the other bank he turned and swung the axe at the head of the tortoise and that
was severed too. Of this, though, he repented, and as the head swung down the stream he put the
head of the snake in its place. Then the beast rolled over and sank out of sight.

And so[...]les have a shakes head and are tail-less.

And if the last woman of the lllawarra Group, who is still living, is asked about it, and if all the points
of the story are examined, it will be found that there i[...]fiction in it.

Those who ask, however, must have the right sympathy or they will hear nothing.

How the White Waratah became Red

{The following Sherbrooke story is taken from Peck (1925, pp.26-29). The narrator is unknown}

There is really a white waratah. And it occurs in New South Wales and Tasmania. In the latter place
they are in some profusion.

Every season it may be found in some parts, and the bushes that bear them will have none other
year a[...]y white ones which have somehow been impregnated. The creamy ones have some food that
was meant for the leaves, while the pink ones are surely longing for a taste of the gorgeousness of
the reds.

in New South Wales white waratahs have been seen at Sherbrooke and at Mittagong. One at the
former place was changed to the red that it desired.

In the dark dense jungle there a sleek and beauti[...]

The rich soil in the gullies and sunken flats produces wonderful veget[...]-grown myrtles, big
laurels, towering eucalypti - the Consideniana, or White Ash, the Oreaves, the Smithii, and even the
Sieberiana - made daylight nearly dark; and of climbing plants, the cremophila longifolia and
verbenas; and sweet-sme[...]or Mountain Musk: there was such a
profusion that the shadows allowed the winged fox to camp unmolested for centuries.

Underfoot, the carpet of dark fallen leaves was feet thick. Down in there the horrible leech waved
and swayed in his blind sear[...]ten upon in order to get his fill of blood, while
the brown bottle-tick lost no time in detaching himse[...]y his proboscis in
some unfortunate passer-by, in the same quest as the leech.

In there, too, were gorgeous parrots and[...]er birds, and tits, and wrens, and
such a host of the feathered tribes as to seem like a moving mass of[...]abies softly hopped or curled in a tangled bower; the bush rat and the bandicoot
peeked in their seclusion, and the native cat slunk along as only felines can.

Ther[...]roud wonga. Sailing serenely up above it all were the hawk and the eagle. While
the wonga remained indoors she was safe.

Up over the cliff where the country was flat, the bush was rocky and open and dry. The hawk's
piercing eye saw every move out there.

The white waratah gazed skyward and felt dreadfully alone. All around the waratahs were red. This
one only was without colo[...]like its neighbors of its own botanical family.

The handsome wonga had lost her mate. Her green spots[...]She stretched herself upon tip-toes and searched the jungle. She ceased to look for a surfeit of
food, and she stepped on and on, always approaching the creek where beyond it the cliff rose, and
above it was the open forest, and up out there she would go!

So s[...]eavy flapping.
Increasing her speed, she swept by the trees over the brook and up the cliff, alighting just at the
foot of the white waratah.

Then she heard the call of her mate.

Foolish bird that she was. He was still down in the darkened jungle. His morning could not have
been[...]ned her wings again. But too late. A rush through the air like a streak of lightning or a
shooting star!

‘Swish!’

The hawk was down through the branchless space and upon the beautiful wonga beneath the
whitewaratah.

But she was heavier than he[...]

The hawk certainly rose, but he did not carry the wonga far. The pigeon was torn, and her life was
ebbing with the flow of blood. Her last struggle was her release,[...]few feet she
wrenched herself free and fell upon the white waratah. Her little claws grasped the colourless

pistils.

The eagle above espied the hawk, and he was left to fight another battle in which he was the
looser

So the white waratah was stained with the blood of the wonga pigeon, and the bird, still clinging to
the reddened pistils, died.

Later, the white waratah threw out its cluster of follicles, and they were streaked with red. The
seeds were streaked in the same way. And all the plants that came from them bore flowers as red
as[...]had to wait forthree years to know that.

Not so the parent bush. Always afterwards its flowers were red, and whenever the natives saw a
white waratah they pricked their fingers and allowed their blood to stain the bloom. So there are

not many white waratahs in New South Wales.

The Black Satin Bird

{The following South Coast story is taken from Peck (1933, pp.225-32). The narrator is unknown}

On the South Coast of New South Wales (not the lllawarra coast, which is not the South Coast) is a
wonderful tract of undulated forest, wild and jungled brush. The highlands of this big territory
overhang a strip[...]verdant bush which rolls north and south, showing the
creeks and gullies by the deepness of the purple, and which, eastward, thins out to paddock[...]gh one day they will be pressed on
and will cover the jungle and will be engulfed out over the beaches.

The jungle is the home of giant gums and dense myrtle, of umbrageous fig and tall palm, of
sassafras and supplejack. The millions of shafted trees rear their topmost boughs up into the
clouds and stand as great pillars, and the voice of animal and bird reverberates as the human

voice does amongst fluted pillars of a great cathedral.

But the movement of wallaby and bandicoot and bush-rat, of the lyre-bird as he scratches, of the
spotted native cat and the wallaroo, is silent, for there is a carpet of fallen leaves that allows no
more sound than does the Axminster or the Brussels of the mansion.

All the wonder growth of our best Australian bush is in t[...]ark. Rolling ridges are round and ferned. Down in the depths the creeks lie still. All the ferns, all
the mosses, all the deep-green, rank-grown underscrub hem the chill waters of the little sunless
creeks and close them about. Trailing vines and heavy myrtles make the gullies almost

impenetrable.

Up the slope of the mountain the scrub is less, and massed burrawangs hang out their fronds as if
to repel the wanderer.

In one of the densest of the gullies, where the Eugenias and the ceratopetalums hide the carpet of
fallen leaves, lived a family of satin birds.

The King of the family was jet-black.

Down on the shores of the great wide Casuarina-fringed lagoons lived a fami[...]nes. Their
king was jet—black and his totem was the satin bird of like colour.

When the hunters tired of fishing, and when they wearied of crossing the sand—dunes and the
glaring, shimmering beach - glaring and shimmering on every fine day of summer - to poke off the
mussels and spear the butterfish and groper, they pushed through the ceratopetalums and the
burrawangs, and, following the tortuous bed of the principal creek amid the ferns and the moss
and the vines and the myrtles, gradually ascending, they entered the sub-tropical patch where the
ferns were huge and tank and staghorns clustered on rocks and trees, and the beautiful
Dendrobium clung, and the supplejacks and Ieathenivoods and bangalow palms[...]lender
height, and that pretty massive parasite - the wild fig - made its umbrageous shade, as has been[...]penetrated through this dense foliage. Never did the falling nor clinging
plants here feel the drying wind or see a sunbeam. it was never dry.

The porcupine pushed his spikey body through, slowly raising and lowering his banded quills, and
the fat bandicoot snouted for roots, and sleek tiger-cats lay in wait for the pretty green tree-snake,
and for other venomous reptiles; the brown-banded and carpet and diamond snakes twined
among the vines or lay coiled between the damply warm roots.

Above, in the upper branches, the colonies of pretty flock and top—knot pigeons clattered, and a
little lower the parrots and gill-birds shrieked. Below them the wrens and tits mingled with fantails,
both black and brown, and down on the ground the little seed-eaters darted, while the coy lyre-bird
stood and made his mocking calls or scratched powerfully to unearth his meats - the grubs and
bugs and roaches of the damp underscrub.

When they had rested enough the straying hunters, with singleness of thought, aro[...]rose sheer with just one narrow cleft down which the water rushed or fell, and on the
level crest of that a view above the figs and other tops over the Ceratopetalums and burrawangs,
and across the shimmering surface of the lake above the now hazy sand—dunes and beach to the
wide, flat, blue sea, met the admiring gaze of the men.

But there was still far to go.

A wide slope down again to the level at the back of the ridge where the water of the creek was a
miniature lake with just the narrow cleft cut through the wall, and down where the vines grew again
and the eucalypti were mingled with turpentine.

A few ho[...]gling with impending vines here, and they came to the gully of the
satin birds.

The darting, timid birds with the shining greenish plumage sat stock still while they watched the
party of hunters. The jet—black king had chosen a burnt patch on the side of a Richea, and there he
clung, his colour and that of the grass—tree making him almost invisible.

Then one of the hunters spied the home of his favorite grub on the side of this grass—tree, and as
he detoured to get to it the black satin thought he was discovered and sprang out. He was very fat
and heavy, and the surrounding scrub was thick, so he flapped awkwardly into the entanglement of
Clematis and Eugenias.

Like a flash the nullah was flung, and with a grunt of satisfaction the Aborigine rushed fon/vard and
seized his victim.

Now one of the party was the brother of the king of the group, and he, too, was of the satin-bird
totem. He asked to be allowed to examine the king of the satin birds, and, without touching it,
having satisfied himself that it was really the totem of his father and himself, he said that it must not
again be produced so that he could see it. The man who killed it must hide it, and it must be
co[...]uite out of sight of any man whose totem it was.

The black bird was hidden in the bag that was worn attached to the rope of fur around the black
man’s waist.

The giant range was still far ahead and there were many miles of this wooded country to be
traversed before the party could reach the blue top that met the sky, and they pushed on until it
was too dark to go further. No food was eaten that evening, and the dead satin bird remained fully
feathered in the bag of the captor.

During the night he rolled in his sleep and the bag was emptied.
The black satin slipped beside the bird man.

In the morning when he awoke he saw what had happened, a[...]ned. He had been taught that he must never handle the king of the satin birds. The
whole family was to him tabu, but the most tabu was the black one.

People who were tree people or flower people, or indeed of any other totem, could handle the satin
bird and eat it.

However, as the custom was, he said nothing. All day he wondered what would be the ill that
would come to him.

Once, in going over the deep creek by traversing one of a hundred logs that lay from bank to bank
- a creek that wound along the foot of the enormous range - he slipped, and a jagged broken[...]that that was perhaps his punishment.

After that the real ascent, with all its difficulties and dangers, began. The men were behind a high
pointed mass of mountain r[...]ised on its top and they were shut in by
that and the surrounding steeps and by a wall of thousands of feet which was yet to be climbed,
and then the sun went out.

Unnoticed, the day had changed.

Buried as they were in the dense forest the sky was out of their ken. It had dulled. Deep clo[...]n in plenty.

Presently a fierce gust swept along the side, and after that the heavy rain fell. The black men
huddled together and were at first undecided about what to do.

Presently, it was agreed that the best thing as to return to the shelter of the gully behind the
sharp-topped mount, there to await the passing of the rain.

They lit fires and the man with the black satin bird turned his back to the rest to pluck it, and he
took fire from the little heap, and out of the sight of the others he cooked his bird.

Suddenly there came a roar from the mountainside. Huge rocks were crashing down the steep. A
rock had given way, and it came on, bringing others, and felling trees, and the group of blacks
were right in its path.

Th

...-y scrambled up and each ran, holding the cooked food in the hands, to es!‘

OY\D
nu \4I\\J u y nu nu. nun vuyu.

The falling mass was almost upon them. It was coming[...]ough it was impeded by trees so also were they by the scrub.

The wound in the leg of the king’ son prevented him from going as fast as the others, and the man
with the piece of satin bird in his hand stayed to aid him.

He grasped the arm of the other and they sped on, stumbling and falling, bu[...]hen
their hands slipped together and each touched the totem.

Then they were paralysed. They fell. A big tree crashed.
The rest escaped. They got out of the path of the avalanche of rocks.

When the falling debris was stilled and the rain was ceasing and the wind was lessening they
retraced their strides and they found the unlucky pair.

This put an end to their adventure[...]he saw a disrespect, whether intentional or
not. The ancestors were all jealous gods and they found wa[...]n upon everyone
connected with it.

They returned the way they went out. There were the usual lamentations and the usual mourning
period. The wives especially were required to show great sorr[...]ves in various places, particularly
straight down the middle of the head so that blood ran over the face and down the neck, they
satisfied the onlookers that they were genuinely grieved.

No one everwent exactly to the place of the tragedy. Therefore, when, long years aftewvards, white
men were clambering about that steep of the great Curockbilly Range, they found the bones, and a
derelict remnant of that once virile family told enough for me to write the story of the black satin.

The Dianella Berry

{The following east coast story is taken from Peck (1933, pp.99-102). The narrator was possibly
Ellen Anderson}

We have given the rush with the pretty blue berries its name after the Goddess of the Woods -
Diana - the hunter’s deity. And it is strange but true that the Aborigines had an idea much the
same. They said that the plant at one time in the alcheringa was the hair of a certain woman who
lived deep in the bush.

The one who lived in the bush only, had for a husband a mighty hunter whos[...]nd even insect and reptile fled from that part of
the country and did not return for a very long time.

The woman was always most grieved when she saw the animals that she loved flying in fear, and
one da[...]hairwas at that time very luxuriant and she took the little bird and hid it in
it.

After that many birds found the same sanctuary under similar circumstances and at last the
number was so great that it was impossible for them all to be hidden. One bird-the woodpecker
begged to be allowed to leave and to try his luck by hiding under the loose bark of a big tree. This
place was not secure, and when the angry man saw him there with part of his body sho[...]his spear. lt missed, but was so close as to make the woodpecker hop sharply further up.
Another spear and then another were thrown, each one causing the frightened bird to jump one
more step upwards.

The man's anger waned; his arm grew tired: he lay down to sleep. The bird flew to the woman and
plucked one hair from her head. This he hid, hoping that the next time that the big hunter was
angry and roared the hair would be enough to cover, not one woodpecker only, but the whole
woodpecker family.

it is noticed that woodpeckers to this day hop up and up the trunks of trees and the blacks say that
they are looking for a place to hide from the wrath of a forest giant. They listen intently and strain
their ears to catch the sound of the roaring.

We know that the birds are simply looking for food, and some of us believe that the Aborigines
know this quite well, only feigning to think that it is for any other purpose. Perhaps they think the
tale is too pretty to lose.

Next time that the hunter was angry and threatening, the woodpeckertried his plan. He flew to the
place where he had hidden the strand of hair, and he found that he could be cov[...]self until none was left hanging. Other birds saw the plan and followed it.

The time came when the woman had but little hair left. But rain fell where the hairs were put and
warm sun shone on the places and the hairs grew and flowers came upon them all and afterwards
berries formed.

It was no longer necessary for the birds and the animals to flee far to escape the wrath of the
husband of their benefactor. ‘

They only had t[...]in amongst them
and they were quite hidden.

But the day came when a jealous sister came down from the cumulus cloud. She told the man he
declared that he would find every one of those clusters and destroy them. The sister gave
directions to the rest of the family still up in the sky that they were to keep their clouds away from
the place so that no more rain could fall and the hairs would no longer grow. She saw that the wife
was now denuded of hair and she wanted to please the husband and thought that no more could

ever be seen after those growing ones were destroyed.

But the berries had fallen and lay covered by the now dry soil. The clusters of hairs did die, and the
earth suffered from a great drought.

She no longer spoke to those still in the sky. They heard of her treachery and they did not[...]m that place
and they came again and they brought the lightning and the thunder with them. They poured their
rain down upon the earth and every little blue berry gave birth to another hair that took root and
became a plant.

The rain kept on longer than ever before and there wa[...]ir
rushes was destroyed. To—day they grow where the ground is wettest, as well as in dryer parts.

Aboriginal women of all the east coast of Australia know this story and they believe it, and because
they think that the spirit of the woman who loved birds and animals is still in the dianella rush they
like that plant best for the weaving of baskets and mats.

Why the Waratah is Firm

{The following Georges River story is taken from Peck (1925, pp.52-5). The original narrator was
Griffiths - or Coomercudgkala - of Taralga}

The whole Georges River tribe were camped on the flat that lay between the bouldered cliffs on
each side of the river. The weather had been very dry. Surely Australia had been passing through

one of the droughts so well known to us.

Though the happenings I am about to describe took place many thousands of years ago, and
though the story may have been altered in the telling by so many fathers right down the line, yet it
is just like any other story that might be told by any of us as far as the dry weather is concerned.

The river had not been in flood for several years or moons. And fish and eels were scarce. Only the
big holes had them. The holes at the rocky flat were full seventy feet deep.

Most of the tribe were lolling in the shade. Only the hardiest stood motionless on the rocks with
spears poised, while the baiters gently scattered fine pith from the cabbage palms or chewed up
seeds of the macrozamia to attract the fish and bring them to the surface.

Warmeela, the son of the king, was the hardiest of all, and Krubi, his lubra, was never done warning
him about the risks he took in war and hunting. Even now she stood under the myrtles, and with
the waratah she held in her hand she beckoned Warmeel[...]ut Warmeela took no notice. Instead he glanced to the west, for away over there great thunder
clouds swelled slowly but surely up, and the faint zephyr that swung softly down the ravine ceased
altogether. The hot air stood still. The only movement was the zip of the spear that pierced the
water and the quick kick of the impaled fish as he was suddenly lifted out and dr[...]revice
where his struggles soon ended.

Then came the roll of thunder. The clouds blotted out the sun. A shade like the blackened haze of
an eclipse spread over the river. One of the baiters went back to the myrtle scrub.

But Warmeela remained.

Soon all but he had retired. The tribe was moving back to a huge cave they knew of, formed by the
rolling together some time or other of several en[...]poised spear. Like a million cracking whips came the next crash, and
with it a frightful jagged fork of lightning. Warmeela was struck. His spear was hurled over the
water and stuck quivering feet deep in a soft place on the opposite side. There was a charred mark
down its whole length, and the point of bone was wrenched off.

Warmeela lay pro[...]h. His brother rushed to him. He bore him back to
the tribe. Rain poured down. Roll after roll, crash after crash of thunder shook the hills. The wind
came tearing through the giant gums and swirling amongst the myrtle shrubs.

Warmeela was unconscious of it all. He heard nothing of the consternation of his tribe. His old
mother rubbed his hands, while the king gazed stupidly. Krubi the beautiful, held his head on her
arm.

The storm rolled off again as quickly as it came, and[...]s. A print of a gum tree lay across his face, and the limbs were marked over his eyes.
The sight was gone. A white streak appeared in his je[...]And he was blind.

Now, Warmeela was most fond of the honey of the waratah. The great doryantes excelsa (gigantic
lily) produced much honey, but the ants and gnats got most of that. Seldom did an Aborigine
regale himself with the juice of that flower, because he did not like the taste of ants northe stings of
theflies.

But the waratah was different. Its honey, though less, was sweeter, and very often there were no
insects in the flower at all. And though it may seem strange to us, the bloom of the waratah was
very soft.

That was what the broken—hearted native whom they called Griffith[...]—hearted and so high-spirited. He stumbled
amid the rocks. None but Krubi would he sufferto lead him.[...]rubi had to engage herself
with those things that the women did, but always before she was half—way t[...]she did not come at once he went off by himself.

The waratahs were blooming again, for a year had gone[...]and carry for
himself. Two flowers bothered him. The big yellow podelepis accuminata and the flower of the
native musk (olearia argophylla) often deceived h[...]s you?" she asked.

Warmeela felt for her hand. ''I do not know one flowerfrom another," he answered. ''I would drink of
the honey of the waratah, but I cannot find it often, and I mistake others for it."

"Then," said Krubi, "we shall find a way so that you will know the feel of it from all others. Come with
me,Warmeela."

Krubi led him to the place where the lightning struck. There was a mark in the rock. Krubi followed
it. Why she hardly knew. Warmeela was willing to hold her hand and be led. The mark struck
straight on over the flat rocks and the boulders to the eroded bank. It showed on the bare root of a
gum tree, and the tree was split. It was the very tree that was printed on the face of Warmeela.

Krubi sat by the gum, and there she spoke to the Great Spirit. No one knows what she said, but
aft[...]got up, and bidding Warmeela wait, she sped over the rocks and logs until she
found a beautiful red waratah. She returned with it and held it close to the crack in the gum tree.
The soft pistils were drawn up. They stiffened. Krubi held the flowerto Warmeela, and when he felt
the difference he clasped his big hand over it. He clasped too hard. He bent the red pistils, and in
that moment a big light lit the sky.

A red ball descended, lighting up the day in such a way as to startle all who saw it. S[...]bi and Warmeela. They knew what no one else
knew. The good bunyip had answered Krubi's prayer, and then[...]eela had no difficulty
whatever in distinguishing the waratah.

And that is why our national flower tod[...]it is loved by us all.

At Low Tide
Allambee and the Great White Spirit

(The Coming of the white Man to Australia)

{The following story of coastal New South Wales - most likely lllawarra and the South Coast - is
taken from Peck (1933, pp.136-43). It tells of the eventual arrival in Australia of the white race as

descendants of the Aborigine Allambee and the great white spirit}

This is a story, in part, of the coming of the white man to Australia. Whether it is wholly true[...]perhaps, matter. It is true this far - that since the earliest times the Aborigines did believe
that a black man was taken by a great white spirit and he became the ancestor of the great white
race.

It was thought that the black man was so favoured by the god that he took him to his own realm,
and that o[...]voured, was allowed to penetrate after death into the country of this white race and become
white like the ones there, and then come back for a time to his[...]have many accounts of white people being taken to the hearts of the blacks just because
they thought that perhaps those white were the favoured blacks who came back.

Often a scar on the white man was the recognised mark; sometimes it was a peculiarity o[...]times there was some likeness in facial features. The
blacks were all very quick to notice such things.

There are many stories of kindness done by the blacks at times when the white was powerless,
and it is a fact that the traits of human character that make for benevolence and charity were

pronounced in the autochthonous inhabitants of this country.

All over Australia men and women waited for the return of the man who was taken to be the
ancestor of the white race. On the great plains the vantage points were trees, but if there were an

That white morning away back in the thousands of years ago that brought Allambee from[...]ecause he was slow in his movements), blinking at the sun that
was just crawling up from the edge of the sea, was just the same as the many white mornings that
brought me out of my tent to look at the same sun steadily rising from beyond the horizon down
on the New South Wales Coast, somewhere in the mists of my past.

But in Al|ambee’s day there were different things everywhere. Whether of the animal world or the
plant world or of the spirit world the Aborigines were not clear, and from what they said, I believe
that it was of the spirit world, for their belief in magic from above nature, and the supernatural in all

things, was pathetically great.

The sky became brilliant. The sea was whitey-grey with specks of flashing silver coming from the
sun to a wide mark just behind the breakers. These specks danced like shaking beads.

Away to the north the sea was calm and flat and still and light blue; away to the south it was just as
calm and flat but a little bluer. The horizon was level and clear and sharp. The breakers were very
lazy. They just reared up and[...]am and fell and come on and in. When they reached
the beach they slipped in lines of tiny foam and turned and faded out.

The beach was yellow and massed with shells and dry cuttle-fish and a few old water-smoothed
logs lay about on the sand. An irregular line of mesembryanthemum and marram-covered dunes
stood then, and Xerotes rush with the pebbly and spikey flowers forbade unwary trampling. Big old
gnarled Banksia serrata leaned over bowing to the sea, and the underscrub was leptospermum
and bracken fern with[...]sloped to a wide rushy lagoon, and back of it all the flat-sided and sheer
and dense-clad range.

Now, of this beauty all is gone but the sea and the sky, for white man is the despoiler of nature. The
range is made bare. The lagoon is dried up. The banksias and the ferns and the bushes are all
gone. The sand dunes are all torn away, and the shells are trampled and broken. The dust of
civilization and the dirt of coal mines and the dazing noise of industry - the, after all, useless
industry — of white man, vilify the air.

When white man came the land was as Allambee saw it and as it had been for the ages. Whatever
the difference occurred was the difference of evolution, not of revolution.

A flat patch of rock to the southwards that was edged with green mosses and sprays of seaweed
caught the breakers and the mosses were sparkled and the seaweed swung with the water as it
receded. When the tide was low and the waves just murmured and the seagulls swept the surface
with their sharp wings there was a wide, low slope of beach.

Allambee walked amongst the sleeping people and stood on the sand dunes.

He saw a strange sight. A white man sat on the sea over against the flat patch of rock. He was very
big.

He had flow[...]. He had never seen anything like this sight, for the
man was huge and bright and white, and all about and belonging to this apparition was the same —
huge and bright and white.

At fi[...]

The sun came high up and the sparkling flashes became less and less and the white morning
became blue and a little breeze sprang up in the north-eat and came on in little pulses across the
sea and stirred the leaves of the banksias.

The people moved and dogs stretched themselves and ya[...]e forgot his fears and determined to go across to the rocks to see the big man who sat on
the sea. He wanted to talkto him.

The great stranger said that he had come to choose a good man to go with him to the place from
whence he had come, for a king was wan[...]and to cause a race of
people to come to inhabit the land and make it grow the beautiful things that were on other parts of
the coast, especially that part which we call lllawar[...]tor, so he consented to go. But he must return to the camp and have just one last look at
those whom he[...].

He found his wife and his little brown baby on the sand dunes just where he had stood when he
saw the big man on the water. Others of the family group were by this time astir, and were ei[...]were trying to decide what they would hunt during the day.

Many women were seated at fires, and watching to see the round stones become heated enough
to use for baki[...]thers were idly jabbing their digging sticks into the grass. The
rest were either patting the dogs or just standing awaiting orders. Children were playing about -
some in the lagoon and some on the sandy patches or amongst the green grass.

Some men were busy extracting the tough sinews from wallabies legs to use as tying strings and
binding their stone axes in the handles. Others were applying themselves to the cooking and the
fashioning of weapons, as l have written.

None had gone to the beach. Only Allambee’s wife had reached the sand dunes, and there she sat
awaiting her husban[...]told her what had happened. She looked across to the rocks but she could see
no man at all. She grew v[...]Allambee had seen any such thing
he must be what the Scotch call "fey." So she said nothing, and takin[...]trepidation and inward weakness, and went back to the camp.

Allambee followed.

All the people could see that something had occurred to Allambee, and the wife whispered that it
was magical and no one spo[...]ntage.

So Allambee silently passed from out from the people and going down to the rocks he waded into
the water. Many of the family group went as far as the sand dunes and from there they watched.
The principal watcher was his wife.

During many days[...]some sort, was, even in their distress because of the loss
of a husband, a source of satisfaction.

She entered into the preparation of the food just as before. She tendered her children. When the
women went to the rocks either to the north orto the south to assist in the catching of crustaceans
or the spearing of swimming fish or the trapping of eels, she went too. She made r[...]

bags of rushes and sea-grass, and she watched the black under her baby's skin gradually
spreading o[...]ould come back and she would know him.

Then came the time when the king ordered the people to go to another part of the coast. While
they were wending their way along the beach they came to a place where a creek spread itself out
on the sand, and only a narrow bar separated it from the water of the sea.

Allambee's wife was the first to essay to pass along the bar. It was of sodden sand, and underneath
that there was much soft and rotted weed.

She sank. The sand was a patch of treacherous quicksand.

Allam[...]relatives,
for all those people whom Aliambee, by the mles of his race, might have married were considered
as much mother as the real mother, and Allambee's brothers as well as those brothers of the
women he could have taken to wife were uncles, so[...]mother had joined him. This belief was shared by the people and
Allambee's son was looked upon with mo[...]nce. He was under instruction for many
months but the day came when he was accredited, and after this h[...]accepted
and he grew to be of great importance.

The people had moved back and forth many times. He knew all the story of his father, and every
time that the camp was back near those flat rocks he spent many mornings on the sand dunes
gazing out to sea and hoping to find his father coming back with the great white spirit with whom
he had gone away.

When again the tide was full and the rocks were covered and the breakers dashed against the cliffs
and the beach was under water he did not bother to look. If the storm blew and the rain fell, and
the wind lashed the leaves of the banksias and twirled the bushes and the streamers of marram
that grew on the sandhills he thought it was no time to watch, forthen the sea was very rough and
no one, not even a spirit,[...]His day at last passed away and he went out into the beyond and his people buried him in the
sand. All the rest of the people who died were buried in the shallow graves further up the beach,
and after a time their bones were taken up and scattered, but a member of the immediate family
took an arm bone or a shin bone[...]en.

Each successive priest in his day watched on the sand dunes.

Then came a day just like that day on which the great spirit man appeared. The sun came up out of
the sea in a white sky as before and the sparkling spots danced and spread on the water and the
waves were weary.

A priest stood on the sand dunes. Away out on the ocean the great white thing appeared. it rolled
with the water.

The priest ran to the slumbering people and soon the sand dunes were lined with men and women
and children who watched the unknown thing out on the sea.

The tide went out. They fully expected it to turn and come in, and to see Allambee with it. The story
of him was as fresh in the knowledge of the tribe as if the happening of his going was one of only
the day before. The priests, one after the other, kept the story green.

There was not much work that day. And all the conversation was about Allambee and the expected
coming.

The white thing was the first of many that came, and it was seen that white men came from them
and sometimes white women were with the men.

These men and women were of the race that Allambee went to be the ancestor of, and to this race
belong all men who go out back and return white.

The Gigantic Lily and the Waratah

{The following stories are taken from Stan Thomas’s The Town at the Crossroads - A story of
Albion Park (Albion Park,[...]extracted from C.W. Peck‘s Australian Legends
(1925), and much abbreviated}

The Gigantic Lily

....It is difficult to find proof that the origin of myths and legends was directly associated with the
natives of lllawarra, but it has been claimed overthe years that the Gigantic Lily came into being as
a result of an heroic act by the son of a chief, who, with a party of Kurnell Aborigines, were trapped
in a deep ravine of the Georges River by a huge fall of rock during a fie[...]o where we now know as Minto [near Campbelltown]. The young hero was badly
injured as he tried to lower food to the others and lay there exhausted and unable to move. It must
have been a spirit that came up out of the glen, then took his hand and placed it on a small lilacea.
The plant immediately grew up and up with a long thin stalk and a flower on top, the young native
then drifted into a timeless sleep with the leaves wrapped around him.

The Legend of the Waratah

The Legend of the Waratah stems from the story of a beautiful young maiden named Krubi, who
lived in the Burragorang Valley and made herself a red cloak from the skin of a rock wallaby. She
had decorated the coat with the red crest of a cockatoo. She fell in love with a[...]ne cleft so that her red cloak was easily seen by the warriors when
they were returning from battle. Due to the presence of another tribe in the valley, a battle ensued
and as she watched from her vantage point there was no familiarfigure to greet her. The story says
that Krubi waited for seven days, her[...]g to form a small stream, then as she
returned to the campfire, bush plants began to sprout.

She willed herself to die and passed into the tract of sandstone, then up shot a firm straight,[...]like a spear, a glorious red flower appeared, and the natives
called it "Waratah." (it being claimed that this legend was told to an early settler by the then king of
the Burragorang tribe).

The story of the Bunyip, a monster of peculiar shape and habits, was often associated, by the old
hands, with the swamp existing over the mountain on the western side of Robertson.

1770-1813

The years 1770-1813 marked the period of first contact between the Aboriginal people of lllawarra
and the South Coast, and whitemen, beginning with sightings of the Endeavouroff lllawarra during
April 1770. It is possible that Portuguese sailors had visited the east coast of Australia prior to
Captain Cook, however no account of their encounters with the local natives survive.

The years between Captain Cook's visit in 1770 through to the arrival of the First Fleet at Port
Jackson in January 1788 were much as prior to 1770 for the local people, with many still unaware
of the existence of Europeans, though according to McAnd[...]y concerning a large
White Swan developed amongst the people of the South Coast, supposedly in connection with
their[...]iers and convicts at Sydney
Cove in January 1788, the whole world was to change dramatically for the original inhabitants of
this land. As Keith Willey says in his 1979 book, it was a time ‘when the sky fell down’ upon the
Aborigines of eastern Australia, such was the trauma of the white invasion.

The years 1788-1813 marked the period of first recorded contact between the Aborigines of
lllawarra and the South Coast and whitemen. As in so many other parts of Australia, initially the
Europeans were seen as the Aborigines’ re-born ancestors — due to their[...]However this mythical aspect soon disappeared as the
natives came to see the harsh realities of white civilization.

This period saw the first massacres by whites and associated depredations; the introduction of
decimating diseases such as smallpox, influenza, and the venereal diseases; and the first instances
of whites living amongst the local Aboriginal population, as noted by Matthew[...]e especially marked by initial explorations along the South Coast of New South
Wales and sparodic encou[...]so resulted in a number of Europeans encountering the local people, though no
official settlements were established along the South Coast during this period.

Unfortunately ac[...]this time are generally brief, merely describing the geographical
discoveries of the explorers and lacking any intimate discussion of the customs of the local
Aborigines. The journals of William Clarke (1797) and Lt. Grant at Jervis Bay (1801) are the most
descriptive from this period.

Most published and manuscript accounts reveal a decided fear on the part of the Europeans with
regards to the local people - they often considered them canniba[...]tant in our study as they often present a view of the local people prior to the

1770
Captain Cook and the Endeavour

22-28 April 1770: Captain James Cook and the crew of the bark Endeavour sail north along the
New South Wales coast, passing by lllawarra and the South Coast. Surviving accounts of the
voyage, by both Captain Cook and Joseph Banks, contain the first European observations on the
Aborigines of the region.

James Cook’s Log

The following extracts are taken from the log of Captain Cook. The first reference to the local
people was made when the Endeavourwas off the coast near Pigeon House mountain, south of

U||ad[...]having a gentle breeze at S.W., and
were so near the shore as to distinguish several people upon the Sea beach. They appeared to be
of a very dark or black Colour; but whether this was the real Colour of their skins or the Cloathes

they might have on I know not.

[The next day the Endeavour was sailing along the coast between Jervis Bay and Red Point, near
Wollongong]

Wednesday, 25th April: ....In the Course of this day's run we saw the Smoke of fire in several places
nearthe Sea beach.

[The following observations were taken off the coast near Bass Point (Shellharbour) and Red Poin[...]along shore before dark, and 2 or3 times a fire.
[The following attempted landing occurred near Collins Point, Woonona]

Saturday, 28th April: In the P.M. hoisted out the Pinnace and Yawl in order to attempt a landing,
but the Pinnace took in the Water so fast that she was obliged to be hoisted[...]e, which we imagin'd they were going to put in to the Water in order to Come off to us; but in
this we were mistaken.

Being now about 2 Miles from the Shore Mr. Banks, Dr. Solander, Tupia, and myself put off in the
Yawl, and pull'd in for the land to a place where we saw 4 or 5 of the Natives, who took to the
Woods as we approached the Shore; which disappointed us in the expectation we had of getting a
near View of them[...]t we no where could effect a landing by reason of the great Surff which beat everywhere upon
the shore. We saw haul'd up upon the beach 3 or 4 small Canoes, which to us appeared not much
unlike the Small ones of New Zealand.

some opposition]

Joseph Banks’s Journal

Joseph Banks, naturalist aboard the Endeavour, kept a detailed journal during the voyage {refer
J.C.Beagleho|e, The Endeavour JournalofJoseph Banks, 1768-1771, Angus & Robertson, Sydney,
1962}.

The following extracts from the journal of Joseph Banks deal with the lllawarra and South Coast
Aborigines as observed[...](N.B: there are some variations in dates between
the Cook and Banks accounts):

[On 20 April the Endeavour was sailing north between Cape Howe and Cape Dromedary]

20. The countrey this morn rose in gentle sloping hills which had the appearance of thethe Evening several more.
[On 21 April the Endeavour was sailing north between Cape Dromedary and Bateman’s Bay]

21. In the morn the land appeard much as it did yesterday but rather more hilly; in the even again it
became flatter. Several smoaks were[...]ore

populous; at night five fires.

[On 22 April the Endeavour was off Point Upright, north of Bateman’s Bay and south of Pigeon
House Mountain]

22. The Countrey hilly but rising in gentle slopes and we[...]which are built tour square with a small dome at the top.

In the mom we stood in with the land near enough to discern 5 people who appeard through our
glasses to be enormously black: so far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampier’s acco[...]ther or
not they were men.

Since we have been on the coast we have not observed those large fires which we so frequently
saw in the islands and New Zealand made by the natives in order to clear the ground for
cultivation; we thence concluded not much in favour of our future friends...

[On 23 April the Endeavour was becalmed off the region of Pigeon House Mountain]

23. Calm today, myself in small boat but saw few or no birds The ship was too far from the
shore to see much of it; a largerfire was however seen than any we have seen before...

[On 24 April the Endeavour was sailing north in the region of Jervis Bay]

24. The wind was unfavourable all day and the ship too far from the land for much to be seen; 2
large fires howeverwere seen and several smaller.....

[On 25 April the Endeavour was sailing north between Shoalh[...]

O’CIock...
[On 26 April the Endeavour was off Illawarra and to the north]

26. Land today more barren in appearance[...]might be no
doubt fertile. Fires were seen during the day the same as yesterday but none so large.

[On 27 April the Endeavour was off northern Illawarra, in the region of Bulli, and an attempt was
made to land]

27. The Countrey today again made in slopes to the sea coverd with wood of a tolerable growth
tho no[...]near it; one fire only was in sight
After dinner the Captn. proposed to hoist out boats and attempt to[...]o small
satisfaction; it was done accordingly but the Pinnace on being lowered down into the water was

found so leaky that it was impractical[...]were at this time observed walking briskly along the shore, two of which carried on their
shoulders a small canoe; they did not however attempt to put her in the water so we soon lost all
hopes of their intendin[...]To see something of them however we resolvd and the Yawl, a boat just capable of carrying the
Captn, Dr Solander, myself and 4 rowers was accordingly prepared. They sat on the rocks
expecting us but when we came within about a quarter of a mile they ran away hastily into the

countrey; they appeard to us as well as we could judge at that distance exceedingly black. Near
the place were four small canoes which they left behind. The surf was too great to permit us with a

single bo[...]ere obliged to content ourselves with
gazing from the boat at the productions of nature which we so much wishd to enjoy a nearer

acquaintance with.

The trees were not very large and stood separate from each other without the least undenivood;
among them we could discern man[...]nothing else which we could call by any
name. In the course of the night many fires were seen .... ..

[Banks and some of the crew of the Endeavour made a successful landing at Botany Bay the
following day]

First Contact

[?1770] Whilst sightings of the Endeavour may have been the first contact local Aborigines had
with Europeans, other vessels may also have passed along the east coast of Australia prior to
1788. Refer under 1888 for an account of the first sighting of a European sailing vessel by the
Aborigines of Moruya.

The First Fleet

January 1788: The First Fleet, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, arrives in Botany Bay
and Port Jackson, marking the beginning of white settlement in Australia.

Whilst we have no first hand accounts of the Illawarra Aborigines’ reaction to news of the arrival of
the First Fleet, or details of their first contact with Europeans, nevertheless within the 1839-40 diary
of the geologist Reverend W.B. Clarke {Mitchell Library,[...]n January of 1840. As Clarke records:

On enquiry I find the burden of the song to be: "that the white man came to
Sydney in ships and landed the horses in the saltwater". it is of such ridiculous
subjects that the Blacks of New Holland make their songs - and any[...]s celebrated by a song.

it is clear that news of the First F|eet’s arrival at Sydney Cove would have quickly spread
throughout the Colony (refer Ross, 1976), and members of the Illawarra and South Coast tribes,
many of whom had visited Sydney Harbour over the years to engage in social activities such as
corr[...]olation. Escaped convicts would perhaps have been the first whitemen to visit
Illawarra shortly afterJanuary 1788.

Refer under 1840 for a fuller account of the corroboree observed by Reverend Clarke at
Wollongong. See also the numerous First Fleet Journals for references to the Aborigines at Sydney

in1788.

1789
Smallpox at Port Jackson

April 1789: Smallpox ravaged the Aboriginal people of the Sydney area, killing at least half the
population and leaving Sydney Harbour strewn with corpses.

Many of the local natives left the vicinity of Port Jackson for areas to the north, west, and south. In
their attempt to escape the plague they unfortunately spread the disease far and wide amongst
their people - to wh[...]riod
and may have travelled further south, though the true effects are unknown.

Refer Butlin (1983) for a discussion of the effect of smallpox on the Aborigines of southeastern
Australia during this period, and also during the second epidemic of 1829-31.

Matilda atJervis Bay

November 1791: The whaling vessel Matilda, under Captain Matthew Weatherhead, visits Jervis
Bay — the first European vessel to do so. Whilst there, the captain sketches a plan of the bay, and
later back in England Alexander Dalrymple made the following annotation upon the map {Ida Lee,
Early Explorers in Australia} :

.....In the Matilda many natives were seen and canoes on the beach; the natives
were armed with spears but they could hav[...]rland
from Sydney to lllawarra

14-20 May 1794: A party of two soldiers and an unnamed Aboriginal guide s[...]er - possibly Lake lllawarra — thought to be in the
vicinity of Red Point. They are unsuccessful, failing to penetrate the dense bush south of Port
Hacking.

The following account of their excursion is taken from David Collins’ An Account of the Colony of
Newsouth Wales, London, 1798, 1802 (rep[...].308-309):

.... ..Some natives, who had observed the increasing numbers of the settlers on the banks of the
Hawkesbury, and had learned that we were solicitous to discover other fresh-water rivers, for the
purpose of forming settlements, assurred us, that[...], there
was a river of fresh water which ran into the sea. As very little of the coast to the southward was
known, it was determined to send a small party in that direction, with provisions for a few days, it
not being improbable that, in exploring the country, a river might be found which had hitherto
escaped the observation of ships running along the coast.

Two people of sufficient judgement and discretion for the purpose being found among the military,
they set off from the south shore of Botany Bay on the 14th, well armed, and furnished with
provisions f[...]native, as a guide, who
professed a knowledge of the country, and named the place where the fresh water would be found
to run. Great expectations were formed of this excursion, from the confidence with which the
native repeatedly asserted the existence of a fresh-water river; on the 20th, however, the party
returned, with an account, that the native had soon walked beyond his own knowledge of the
country, and trusted to them to bring him safe back; that having penetrated about twenty miles to
the southward of Botany Bay, they came to a large inlet of the sea, which formed a small harbour;
the head of this they rounded, without discovering any river of fresh water near it. The country they
described as high and rocky in the neighbourhood of the harbour, which, on afterwards looking at
the chart, was supposed to be somewhere about Red Point. The natives returned with the soldiers
as cheerfully and as well pleased as if he had led them to the banks of the first river in the world.

About the latter end of the month the natives adjusted some affairs of honour in a convenient spot
near the brick-fields [Sydney].

The people who live about the south shore of Botany Bay brought with them a str[...]ter; even his name had something extraordinary in the sound
- Gome-boak. He had been several days on his journey from the place where he lived, which was
far to the southward. in height he was not more than five fo[...]with a shield that
covered his whole body. We had the satisfaction of seeing him engaged with some of o[...]rsons nor their reputations suffered any thing in the

contest.

When the fighting was over, on our praising to them the martial talents of this stranger, the strength
and muscle of his arm, and the excellence of his sight, they admitted the praise to be just (because
when opposed to them he had not gained the slightest advantage); but, unwilling that we shou[...]rds killed among his own people in some affair to the
southward.