C.W. Peck - Australian Legends: Aboriginal Dreaming stories of eastern Australia

Figure 1: Softcover edition of Australian Legends, 1925.

C.W. Peck’s Australian Legends, published in two editions during 1925 and 1933, represent a rare compilation of eastern Australian Aboriginal Dreaming stories. They were rewritten by Peck following his travels throughout southeastern Australia in which he was often told the stories first-hand. Collected from the area initially settled by Europeans in 1788, and the first to experience widespread loss of its storytelling tradition, they are significant both in regard to the scarcity of similar published texts and the low survival rate of such narratives due to the decimation of Indigenous population. Dreaming stories are important elements of Aboriginal culture and Peck’s collection serves to preserve some of that heritage, though in an often condensed, anglicized and decontextualized form.

Myths, legends, fairy tales, folklore, fantasy, Dreaming stories – oral, written, illustrated – all form important elements of culture, encapsulating lessons learnt over time, real and imaginary events. They can transport us to worlds where innocence is applauded and evil lurks, or they can inform, entertain, and educate. Civilizations thrive on storytelling, on myth making and on the stuff of legend. The Australian Aborigines are no exception, being one of the oldest races on the planet, with oral traditions going back through the millenia. From the Old Testament and Koran, through to the Iliad, The Lord of the Rings and the legend of the Rainbow Serpent, stories remain an important part of everyday life across civilizations and can reveal to the observer and chronicler elements of individual culture and custom. Yet, the new arrivals in 1788 cared little for the rich cultural heritage of the local people. As Peck asked in 1925:

Why did the early [European] arrivals in Australia imagine that the Aborigines had no folk-lore, no legends, and hardly any “manners, habits and customs”? Is it that they really had none, or that the blacks were merely incomprehensible [to the Europeans]? I think it was the latter. (Peck, 1925)

This quote comes from a small book published in Sydney during 1925 by Stafford & Co., with the rather odd title: Australian Legends: Tales Handed Down from the Remotest Times by the Autocthonous Inhabitants of Our Land (Peck 1925). The author, Charles William Peck, was a Bondi school teacher, poet, amateur anthropologist and collector of Aboriginal Dreaming stories. Australian Legends represented the first substantial publication to concern itself solely with the Aboriginal folklore of the settled districts of eastern New South Wales, especially the region immediately to the south and west of Sydney. Earlier works such as Mary Fitzgerald’s King Bungaree’s Pyalla and other stories illustrative of manners and customs that prevailed among Australian Aborigines and R.H. Mathews’ Folklore of the Australian Aborigines were limited by non-specificity in regards to location, and minimal information on the original storytellers (Fitzgerald 1891, Mathews 1899). They also presented a relatively small collection of stories. K. Langloh Parker’s Australian Legendary Tales was an exceptional model for Peck, recording stories from a specific area of western New South Wales and a specific tribe (Parker 1896). It remains the best known of such collections.

Earliest Collections, from 1788

Aboriginal Dreaming stories had been collected and recorded by Europeans since the earliest days of the arrival of the First Fleet at Port Jackson in January 1788. Yet the Sydney region was poorly served, perhaps due to the military and convict nature of the settlement and the emphasis on the scientific collection of native flora and fauna, rather than comprehensive investigation into cultural aspects of the local people. Australian Legends is therefore an important resource for an area of Australia where tribal and cultural links were shattered quickly due to the effects of colonisation, including disease, displacement and death. For example, during the compilation in the latter part of the 1980s of the present author’s Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines 1770 – 1850, a thorough search was made for published or manuscript myths, legends, songs or Dreaming stories specifically relating to the Illawarra region of New South Wales, located to the south of Sydney (Organ 1989). A few were found in local newspapers and published works by anthropologists such as the Reverend William Ridley, Andrew Mackenzie and R.H. Mathews (Ridley 1872 and 1875, Mackenzie 1874, Mathews 1904). Much later Roland Robinson had also collected a number of stories from Wallaga Lake on the far south coast during the 1950s (Robinson, 1970). These collections represented the sum total of all that had apparently survived in print, apart from possible undiscovered works in regional newspapers and obscure serial publications. Of course, stories survived with the Indigenous community, and continue to be handed down to the present day. However, they are part of an oral tradition, not a written one, and it is only in recent years that that has been taken up by First Nations writers and artists. Manuscript collections such as those of non-Indigenous ethnologists R.H. Mathews and A.W. Howitt were untapped resources and presented an area for future, and ongoing, research, as were oral history investigations within the current Illawarra Aboriginal community, where stories may have been passed down. By far the richest source of Illawarra Dreaming stories easily locatable were those published in Peck’s Australian Legends. But who was C.W. Peck, and what brought him to collect and publish such works?

Charles William Peck 1875-1945

Charles William Peck was born at Woonona on the New South Wales south coast in 1875, the son of James and Sarah Peck. His childhood was spent at the nearby town of Thirroul, and at the age of 16 (in 1891) he was taken on as a student teacher at the local public school. Peck went on to pursue this career for the remainder of his life, working in schools throughout Australia. There are few details of his early experiences, though we know during 1896 he witnessed the ‘coronation’ of the local Aboriginal elder Mickey Johnson as ‘King of Illawarra’ at the Wollongong Show. This took place during the region’s centenary celebrations marking the visit of European explorers Bass and Flinders in 1796.

Peck had left Thirroul by 1907 and, in 1910, was working as a teacher at Spencer’s Gulf in South Australia. He notes that in 1911 he “roamed over a vast tract of Australia”, most likely referring to South and Central Australia, and possibly as far as Western Australia. During this period he also married. On 4 April 1917, at the age of 41 and whilst employed as a teacher at Gambier, South Australia, he enlisted in the 4^th Signal Troop of the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF). Following a period of training, in March 1918 Peck left Australia for Egypt and Palestine. Whilst with the AIF he attained the rank of 2nd lieutenant in the Education Service. Decommissioned in September 1919, he returned to New South Wales, where he set up residence with his family at Bondi and returned to teaching.

Peck first drove a car in 1920, using it as he travelled to areas around Sydney, such as the Burragorang Valley and Blue Mountains. During this period he became secretary of the New South Wales Waratah League, an organisation whose aim was to have the waratah declared Australia’s national flower. In 1925 he published Australian Legends and presented a number of talks to promote the book. Waratahs were featured on the cover and inside. When addressing the Helensburgh Progress Association, he spoke on his experiences during the war, on Aborigines, and the waratah (Anonymous 1925). In 1925-6 he also wrote a large number of region-specific poems, then printed in local newspapers and serials such as The Bulletin. In 1928-9 Peck published, in the Sydney Mail, a further series of Aboriginal Dreaming stories and engaged in a letters to the editor debate in the Sydney Morning Herald over the veracity of claims that rock carvings about Sydney were produced by local Aboriginal people. A colleague in opposing these erroneous views was ethnologist F.D. McCarthy of the Australian Museum.

Peck continued to work as a teacher through the 1930s and in 1933 published a second edition of Australian Legends. This was followed in 1934 by the novel Sins of the Father, and the development of a film script to accompany it (Peck 1934). During that year he also appeared on film in one of the crowd scenes for the Roy Rene comedy Strike Me Lucky. During 1935 Peck was involved in another public newspaper debate, this time on the side of the waratah against the wattle as national flower. Notable correspondents included Mary Gilmore and war correspondent C.E.W. Bean. At the end of 1936, and into the following year, he presented a series of talks on the local ABC radio station 2BL outlining his experiences in Palestine during World War I. In 1937 Peck’s portrait was entered into the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, but did not win a prize.

By 1938 Peck and his wife were living in Hobart, though the relationship was rocky and ended in divorce shortly thereafter. He was back working in New South Wales by 1943 and subsequently sought a teacher position at a number of schools, including Shellharbour and Primbee near Wollongong, close to his home town of Thirroul. On 4 July 1945 Peck was registered as an Assistant Teacher at Mount Pritchard, though he died the following month at his Bondi residence, aged seventy. His few papers in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, contain a collection of published Aboriginal stories, newspaper clippings, and two books of mostly unpublished poetry. He was also the author of some short stories, possibly submitted to The Bulletin and Sydney Mail.

Figure 2: Dustjacket cover for 1925 hard cover edition of Australian Legends.

Australian Legends

In 1925 Peck issued the first edition of Australian Legends, with his own line drawings. It contained 25 Aboriginal Dreaming stories (Table 1), plus an account of a visit to Colong in the Burragorang Valley. Nineteen additional Aboriginal Dreaming stories appeared in the Sydney Mail between 4 January 1928 and 23 January 1929, under the series banner ‘Aboriginal Legends’. A second, slightly expanded version of Australian Legends was published in Melbourne during 1933, with line drawings by George Pownell. The number of Aboriginal stories therein had increased to 34 and an introduction was also included which referred to one of Peck’s sources. This latter edition contained 18 stories which had appeared in the first edition, along with 8 from the Sydney Mail series and another 8 totally new stories, mostly relating to Illawarra and Shoalhaven. All told, between 1925 and 1933 fifty-two individual Aboriginal Dreaming stories, or variations thereof, published by Peck have been identified. Forty were from the area of the Sydney Basin, with the remainder from South Australia, Victoria and one from Western Australia.

Table 1: C.W. Peck’s Aboriginal Legends

{Titles as given by Peck. Localities within New South Wales unless otherwise stated}

(Australian Legends, 1925)

Title Location

1 The First Waratah Burragorang Valley

2 The First Gymea or Gigantic Lily Campbelltown area

3 How the Waratah got its Honey Burragorang Valley

4 How the White Waratah became Red Sherbrooke

5 How the Sky was Lifted Up Murrumbidgee River

6 The First Kangaroo South-east Australia

7 The Struggle for Supremacy between Birds and Animals Megalong Valley

8 How the Pistels of the Waratah became Firm Burragorang Valley

9 Why the Waratah is Firm George’s River

10 The First Bush Fire Hunter River

11 The First Kangaroo Yerranderie

12 The Bubbling Springs South Australia

13 The Salt Lakes Burragorang Valley

14 Shooting Stars ‘Basalt country’

15 Why the Petiole of the Waratah Grew Long Mount Wilson

16 The First Crayfish Shoalhaven

17 The Clinging Koala (and Bunyip) Wollondilly River

18 The White Man’s Boots Nattai/Wollondilly

19 The Hand that tried to draw a Waratah Burragorang Valley

20 Why Trees Have Bark Eastern Australia

21 The Legend of the Pheasant and the Jackass Illawarra

22 The Blood of the Bloodwood tree... Burragorang Valley

23 The Blowing Down of the Mountains to the West Eastern Australia

24 The Fight of the Ants for a Waratah Australia

25 When the Tables were Turned Lachlan River

(Sydney Mail 1928-9)

26 The Dianella Berry East Coast

27 The Smilax Tuggerah Lakes

28 The Story of the Pichi Darling River

29 The Epacris Australia

30 A Star Legend North Coast

31 A Bird Legend Illawarra

32 The Erring Maidens Lake Illawarra

33 A Waratah Legend Burragorang Valley

34 A Waratah Legend Western Australia

35 Mist and a Fringed Flower Appin

36 Stone Throwers Georges River

37 A Sanctuary Legend Australia

38 What the Moon is Murray River

39 Umbels and Stamens of the Eucalyptus Blossom Australia

40 Vicious Birds Shoalhaven River

41 The Tail-less Tortoise Illawarra

42 A Legend of Mists Murray River

43 The Legend of the Shadow South Australia

44 Winged Lomatia Seeds Nepean River

(Australian Legends, 1933)

45 The Flood South-east Australia

46 Why the Sun Sets Murrumbidgee River

47 What Makes the Waves Coalcliff/Stanwell Park

48 Why Leaves Fall Riverina

49 At Low Tide (The Coming of White Man) South Coast / Bellambi

50 Another Legend Burragorang /Illawarra

51 Mulgani Twofold Bay & Illawarra

52 The Black Satin South Coast

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Origins

An Australian Aboriginal Dreaming story loses a great deal through translation and interpretation outside of Country and community. Witness any number of the many compilations of Aboriginal so-called 'myths and legends' on the market which present such stories in an anglicized, edited form (e.g. Mountford 1969, Robinson 1970). Few refer to the original narrator, their specific location (Country), the history behind the gathering of the story, or the manner of their presentation. A significant feature of Peck’s Australian Legends is the identification of specific localities within individual stories, similar to K. Langloh Parker’s work. Peck is usually ambiguous about the original narrator (though not locality); however, he does provide clues and two are clearly identified.

Within the 1925 edition he refers to a certain ‘Mr Murdoch’ as a correspondent. Blue Mountains historian Jim Smith points out that "...many of [Peck’s] legends had been gathered from Burragorang Valley Aboriginals of the Ganndangarra tribe by a Mr Murdoch, of whom little is known, who told them to his son, who told them to Peck" (Smith, 1990). In regards to one of his 1925 stories, Peck informs us that it was originally related to Mr Murdoch at Taralga sometime around 1865 by a native ‘....whom they called Griffiths, when his real name was Coomer-gudgkala.’ Taralga is located south-west of Sydney, on the edge of the Burragorang Valley. During the introduction to a following story, Peck refers again to Mr Murdoch ("...He wrote nothing; he said but little") and his son Alex. This Alex appears to have been one of Peck’s main sources for the first edition of Australian Legends.

Figure 3: Dustjacket cover for 1933 edition of Australian Legends. Illustration by George Pownell.

The role of 'Ellen'

Peck’s second major informant, used from midway through his Sydney Mail stories of 1928-9 and within the 1933 edition of Australian Legends, was an elderly Aboriginal woman simply cited as ‘Ellen’. In the prelude to that second edition Peck paints an affectionate picture of Ellen, referring to her as:

"....the last full-blooded person of the Cammary Tribe .... she finds pleasure in the thoughts she has of her earliest childhood, and the knowledge she has of the real South Coast Aborigine. She is a princess, and she is also sister-in-law of the man who was the last king of the group."

This use of the word Cammary is most likely one of Peck’s interpretations of the Aboriginal Kamilaroi, the native name allocated to the region of northern New South Wales around the Namoi River. The Ellen he refers to is Ellen Anderson. She uses Cammary in reference to the original tribes of Illawarra, and also speaks of a man from northern Illawarra as of the Kamilaroi. In most other published accounts these terms are not used for this region of New South Wales, located south of Sydney. The local tribes therein are usually known as the Dharawal / Tharawal / Wodi wodi. Whether the confusion was originally on Ellen Anderson’s part (most likely not) or due to Peck’s interpretation is unclear.

Ellen Anderson was the sister of Rosie Russell - also known as Queen Rosie of Illawarra - who was the wife of the last ‘King’ of Illawarra, Mickey Johnson. Peck’s use of the terms ‘king’, ‘queen and ‘princess’ throughout Australian Legends is unfortunate as they have no equivalent in traditional Aboriginal cultures. Ellen was the wife of Hughie Anderson and, according to an obituary notice, she died at the Aboriginal camp at Salt Pan, Peakhurst, on 14 May 1931, aged 85 (Anonymous 1931). She is therein cited as having being born at Wollongong around 1846.

Mickey Johnson is well-known to Illawarra historians. He was brought to the district as a young man in the 1860s from Port Stephens by a Mr Weston, and later joined the remnants of the local tribes in the fringe camps south of Wollongong. Mickey was proclaimed 'king' of the Illawarra tribe at Wollongong Show on 30 January 1896, wherein he was presented with an inscribed breastplate by Archibald Campbell, M.P. As noted above, the young C.W. Peck was a witness to the ceremony. Mickey died near Kiama during November 1906 at the age of 72, and his descendants remained in the district.

Peck notes in his prelude to Australian Legends the following proud statement by Ellen:

"...My father came from the North and my mother from the South. His language was not the same as my mother’s. I speak between the two. My words are both his and hers. Yours are neither. You speak like the people of far, far away. I do not understand you. But I know your words are of my country."

Ellen had called her language ‘Nungurra ilukka.’ She also appears to be referring to aspects of the South Australian and Central Australian languages uttered by Peck in conversation. Ellen was a fine storyteller, able to relate some of the stories of her youth. Of her narrative skills Peck comments "...She knew many beautiful legends. But they had nearly all gone from her, for she never told them. She heard them and forgets nearly all. She hears no more, for they are seldom spoken of by the remnant of her race. Time was when the story-teller was an honoured man, when he dressed for his part, when the young people were educated in the lore of the land and the law of the land, by means of legend. But there is so much white blood in the people that practically none wish to hear the stories of the "Alcheringa", and so the stories have faded..." The failure by Aboriginal elders to pass on stories during this period is common, in part for fear of the young people being discriminated against because of their knowledge of, and practice in, traditional custom. This salvage operation aspect of the collecting work of Peck is evident after 1880, when it was widely held that the Australian Aborigines were a dying race. (see MacGregor, 1993)

Content

The Aboriginal stories collected by C.W. Peck contain a variety of subjects, involving humankind, flora, fauna, physical features of the earthly landscape and heavens above, and death - in other words, the complete gamut of the physical, conscious, subconscious and spiritual environment. As a result of Peck’s wide travels throughout Australian and specifically New South Wales (evident from his surviving collection of unpublished poems), and use of at least two sources - Alex Murdoch and Ellen Anderson - his Aboriginal stories present a wide variety of perspectives. Some are feminine, whilst other are sex neutral; many refer to aspects of occultism, to the spirit world, and to life after death. Others reveal the strong links between humankind and the plants and animals of the immediate locality, reflecting the importance of totems.

The Aboriginal Dreaming stories recorded by Peck are typical of those collected from other parts of Australia (c.f. Isaacs 1980). Within them people are often represented totemically as animals, birds, fish, constellations or even plants, and narrators such as Ellen Anderson have shown how such tales played an important part in explaining an individual’s association with a specific totem. She was herself a black snake woman.

The vast majority are descriptive moral or totemic tales involving relationships between beings and/or nature, e.g., The Struggle for Supremacy between Birds and Animals, The First Kangaroo, The Pheasant and the Jackass, and What the Moon Is. Twelve of the stories deal with the creation and evolution of the waratah - how it got its colours (red and white), its uses and significance. A number of captioned stories have historical elements, such as The White Man’s Boots, At Low Tide, Mulgani, and What Makes the Waves. References to the un-named ‘Great Spirit’ - called by some Aboriginal groups ‘Biamie’ or ‘Daramulun’, and, by Europeans, God - are common throughout, as they are for other semi-religious and occult themes. There is also frequent reference to the existence of supernatural beings on the earth similar to the European goblin and Australian bunyip, viz., A Legend of Mists, Stone Throwers, The Bubbling Springs and The Clinging Koala. As an example, Peck’s story Stone Throwers tells the tale of the small, long-haired hairy men of eastern Australia who live in trees or caves and torment passers-by. His Stone Throwers are similar to, though more dangerous than, the Gollum of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy anf the gnome king of the Nibelungen saga. Their local Aboriginal name (according to Peck) was Douligah or Wullindigong, and they may be directly compared to similar humans or beasts described with some horror by a Shoalhaven Aborigine Buthong in the 1890s using the name Wallthegang or Wallanthagang. Anthropologist R.H. Mathews had also mentioned a larger mythical beast of eastern Australia known as the Yaroma. (Mathews 1904, Organ 1989)

The divine element

The important role of the night sky and stars such as the Pleiades and the Milky Way in the after-life is revealed in Australian Legends, with the various constellations and the paths between them perceived as a reality parallel to the earthly abode, as in the following extract from The Legend of the Pleiades (Peck 1925).

So Yunguipan spun two nets, into which he gathered all the women - himself and seven in one net, and the rest in another - and when the moon was full and it sent a long beam like a strip of carpet right down to the sacred place, with their legs through the meshes the two netfuls of grubs walked up and up until they reached the sky. The women down below probed the holes in the logs in vain, for there were no grubs to be got. Bathing in the seas of the moon, Yunguipan and the women became stars, and they had to find a place amongst the other stars in the sky. They crossed the Milky Way, that pukkan of the departed spirits upon which they travel from the earth to heaven, and after wandering for many years they at last settled down. Yunguipan is now Aldebaran, and the seven maidens are the visible Pleiades. One that seems to be broken is the wounded Wakolo. The other women are there, too, and they are the invisible members of the same group of stars. They are faintly visible when the night is clear with frost and there is no haze anywhere. The net can still be distinguished, and there is a long thread that connects the group of Aldebaran.

Likewise, the near environment and associated physical events such as the creation and use of fire, earthquakes, mountain-building, storms, and even the volcanic eruptions of Australia’s geological past, all play an important role in these Dreaming stories.

Too long forgotten

Collections such as Peck’s have been little used by anthropologists and students of Aboriginal culture and society. Many compiled during the period 1880-1940 have been ignored because of their anglicized juvenile presentation, such as Tarlton Rayment’s The Prince of the Totem - A simple black tale for clever white children, a lack of scientific rigour, and removal of contextual detail as in Mary Fitzgerald’s King Bungaree’s Pyalla and James Devaney’s The Vanished Tribes (Rayment 1933, Fitzgerald 1891, Devaney 1929). Current political sensitivities have also placed these forms of emasculated stories – often promoted at the time as fairy tales or myths and legends - out of favour. Past consideration of Aboriginal Dreaming stories often took place within the context of European storytelling traditions, thereby failing to identify or acknowledge their unique elements. Aboriginal people did not necessarily condone the appropriation of their culture in this manner, and the difficulties in presenting them to a wider audience remain significant, when stripped of context and outside their community.

There are few references to the work of C.W. Peck in the published literature. A number of the stories he gathered were used (modified and unattributed) in C.P. Mountford and Ainslie Roberts’ various collections of Aboriginal myths and legends which appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. Marcie Muir in her Bibliography of Australia Children’s Books cites Australian Legends, and yet she goes on to comment that it is "not specifically a children’s book" (Muir 1970). Two stories are reproduced in Jennifer Isaacs’ comprehensive collection Australian Dreaming: 40,000 of Aboriginal History (Isaac 1980). Burnum Burnum’s Aboriginal Australia - A Traveller’s Guide included some Peck stories, though it is possible therein that they were acquired from traditional sources (Stewart 1988). Mention is made of Peck’s stories within John Meredith’s The Last Kooradgie, and one is discussed in an article by Jim Smith on Lt. Barrallier’s 1802 expedition through the Blue Mountains (Meredith 1989, Smith 1990).

It is only since the 1960s that the subject of Aboriginal Dreaming stories has been studied in any detail by anthropologists, ethnographers, and students of Australian literature and folklore. Many such studies fail to obtain Aboriginal input, despite a desire for such and recognition of its importance. Detailed analyses of individual stories are rare. As Graham Seal noted in his study of folklore in Australian society,

...there are a number of urgent tasks facing Australian folklorists and the community in general. In-depth studies of the folklores of ethnic and Aboriginal groups are a priority. (Seal, 1989)

Important recent assessments of Aboriginal Dreaming stories such as those collected by Peck include L.R. Hiatt’s Australian Aboriginal Mythology and the continuing work of R.H. and C.M. Berndt, culminating in their collection The Speaking Land (Hiatt 1972, Berndt 1989). A major catalogue and appraisal of such material on a national or State-wide basis has yet to appear. It is unfortunate that in most Australian bookshops one can still find compilations of Aboriginal ‘myths and legends’ presented in a sterile, anglicised, and juvenile form, stripped of context and meaning.

The degree to which C.W. Peck altered the Australian Legends narratives for publication is unclear, though his literary pretensions are obvious, as is his concern for enhancing the status of the waratah. He does make use of the Central Australian word ‘Alcheringa’ to refer to the distant past Dreamtime phase of Aboriginal history and storytelling, indicating that he had some background knowledge of the topic obtained whilst teaching in South Australia and prior to his work in eastern Australia. However, the word is not indigenous to the Sydney region, and the miss-matching of terms is present in his work.

Post 1945 readings of Mountford and Roberts have long represented the public face of Aboriginal storytelling. Marji Hill and Alex Barlow’s articles and commentaries within the bibliographic Black Australia lay the foundation for criticism of such works and brought a refreshing Aboriginal perspective to the use and study of original Dreaming stories. Appropriation of such material is slowly disappearing thanks to the efforts of Koori authors such as Sally Morgan and Kath Walker. Illustrated publications such as Elsie Jones’ The Falling Star and the various collections by Percy Trezise and Dick Roughsay present the stories from the Aboriginal point of view (Walker 1972, Trezise & Roughsey 1985, Jones 1989).

The failure of Peck’s work to sell may also lie with the ambiguity and miss-titling of the two editions of the book and their limited distribution, not forgetting the ephemeral nature of all newspaper articles into which group his Sydney Mail stories can be placed. The title ‘Australian Legends’ was especially ambiguous at a time when the works of Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson were in vogue. ‘Legend’ was not a word normally associated with Australia or Australian literature in 1925, having still mainly European connotations, though the so-called legend, or story, of the Bunyip was widely known. Furthermore, with no specific reference to Aborigines contained in the main title, Peck’s book has been omitted from bibliographic listings of Aboriginal literature and related material.

A second failing was the distorted presentation of the stories, with their emphasis (reflecting Peck’s personal bias) on things botanical. Due to his being the champion of the waratah and an amateur botanist and natural historian, many of Peck’s stories - rather, his re-telling of the stories - at every opportunity make forced reference to the waratah, with 12 specific waratah legends amongst the total 52 stories published, and many more including references to that plant. As secretary of the Waratah League this is understandable, but lamentable. Such was Peck’s overwhelming interest in the subject that the first edition of Australian Legends is primarily an argument for the waratah to be designated the national flower, against claims by those promoting the wattle. His efforts in that direction often overwhelm the Aboriginal stories, further corrupting them from the original version given him by the narrator. Whether the waratah was so revered by the Aborigines of south-eastern Australia prior to the coming of European settlers is unclear, though it is obviously a totemic plant for New South Wales.

These faults - miss-titling of the book, a botanical emphasis within individual stories, and editorialising - exist alongside the normal problems associated with Aboriginal Dreaming stories recorded by non-Aborigines prior to the 1960s, most notable amongst these being anglicization, miss-translation, simplification, dislocation, distortion, reformatting and the lack of supplementary contextual information. Such mistreatment occurred, and continues to occurs, due to a lack of understanding of the complexities of traditional Aboriginal culture and spirituality on the part of non-Aboriginal investigators. They fail to recognise the intimate relationship these stories bore with religious, ceremonial and everyday life. It is, therefore, rare to find an Aboriginal Dreaming story published prior to the 1960s which is presented within a traditional contextual framework and describes precisely when and where it was used; to whom it was told; and what relation it bore to a specific tribe’s catalogue of such stories. Even rarer is a precise transcription in the original language. Andrew McKenzie is an exception to this, as, on occasion, he would record Aboriginal song and story in the native tongue. In some instances he published this without translation, and as such they remain largely inaccessible to this day, though recent work is enabling a reading of so-called ‘lost’ Aboriginal languages (Illert 2003 and 2013).

Few compilers of Aboriginal Dreaming stories during Peck’s era were trained anthropologists or linguists, and so distortion and error in transcription was common. Peck himself was a school teacher, perhaps more interested in the narrative elements rather than ethnographic attributes. The most extreme examples of this distortion are where Dreaming stories have been translated from the indigenous language into rhyming verse, where there was no original rhyme (Cornwallis 1856, Harney and Elkin 1968, Robinson 1970). The comments of modern compiler and publisher A.W. Reed in this regard are telling:

Every writer who ventures to retell Aboriginal myths, legends or fables must adopt his own style and presentation.... (Reed 1982).

Such an attitude is no longer considered acceptable and efforts are made to record such stories in a form as near to the original narration as possible, with additional contextual detail an important requisite.

Apparently unknown to collectors such as C.W. Peck and Mrs K. Langloh Parker, many of the Aboriginal Dreaming stories they recorded possessed a spiritual dimension equivalent to western Bible stories and parables. The widespread belief among non-Aboriginal Australia from the time of the First Fleet that the local Aborigines had no religion, gave rise to a subsequent disregard for their rich oral traditions. It was a simple follow-on from this that their Dreaming stories should be viewed as merely juvenile amusement, with no divine or moral dimension (Charlesworth, 1989). First Fleet journalist David Collins, who in 1798 and 1802 included a detailed appendix on the custom and culture of the Sydney Aborigines in his An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, did not bother to record this aspect. He came to the rather surprising conclusion in regards to the religion and stories of the local people, after a decade living amongst them:

....no country has yet been discovered where no trace of religion was not to be found .... I can safely pronounce them an exception to this opinion. I am certain they do not worship either sun, moon, or star ... neither have they respect for any particular beast, bird, or fish (Collins 1798).

Collins had totally missed the significant role totems, for example, played in Aboriginal society, and while it is true Aborigines did not ‘worship’ objects in the Western sense, the local stories and songs were full of references to all the items he referred to, with Peck’s Australian Legends reinforcing this matter. For example, the coastal Aborigines of New South Wales had a great deal of respect for, and even reverence of, animals such as the whale and porpoise. They saw them, along with white Europeans, as the reincarnation of their ancestors. Every individual Aborigine also possessed a totem based on an item of local flora or fauna such as a waratah, kookaburra, koala or black snake. There are also numerous sun, moon and star stories amongst Peck’s compilation. And there were God-like figures such as Biame and the devil, alongside heaven - pergatory - hell equivalents. Such a narrow view of Aboriginal culture and storytelling on the part of the British who invaded Australia in 1788 was based on ignorance and arrogance. Collins and his associates were unable to see the richness of the civilisation before them. They simply, and erroneously, cast it off as primitive, juvenile, or non-existent.

Not only were Aboriginal Dreaming stories and their complex cultural context meant to inform, entertain and educate, but also to record historical events, maintain social custom and enforce moral, social, and religious laws. Jennifer Isaacs’ Aboriginal Dreaming compilation is a worthy attempt at combining all these elements in a single volume, presenting not only a history of the Australian continent, but also an overview of Aboriginal custom and tradition. It is an important step in bringing this aspect of Australian Aboriginal culture to the attention of the wider community.

Story as history

If we approach the subject of Aboriginal Dreaming stories from an historical and regional perspective, there was much to be gleaned from C.W. Peck’s Australian Legends. They are largely moral and totemic tales, and while they have no apparent academic pretensions - though were core elements of the education of Aboriginal youth - and have suffered much distortion, they nevertheless go beyond being mere juvenile tales. For example, one of the stories from the 1925 edition - The White Man’s Boots - is a unique account from the Aboriginal perspective of a meeting with the explorer, Barrallier, in the Blue Mountains during 1802. It is an important addition to the historic record. The survival of such a story over more than a century brings into question the commonly held belief that Australian Aborigines had no interest in recording events of the immediate past, and therefore possessed no sense of history (Partington, 1985). There are many instances where this anti-history thesis can be refuted. For example, when the Reverend W.B. Clarke in January 1840 witnessed a corroboree at Wollongong which was attended by tribes from Sydney, Newcastle, Brisbane Waters, Liverpool, Wollongong and Kiama, he was moved to ask one of the participants the meaning of the new song being presented that evening. He recorded the following answer in his diary, with comment:

On enquiry I find the burden of the song to be: ‘that the white man came to Sydney and landed horses in the saltwater.’ It is of such ridiculous subjects that the Blacks of New Holland make their songs - and any trifling event is celebrated by song... (Clarke 1839).

This is an historical record of an incredibly important event. Whilst the Reverend Clarke may have considered the European invasion half a century earlier a ‘ridiculous’ subject and ‘trifling event’, the local people were fully aware of its historic significance, and expressed their feeling in story, song and dance. There are also documented examples of historical events at Illawarra - such as the murder of a white cedar cutter by local Aborigines during the 1820s - being incorporated into the traditional storytelling and mythology of that region. Apart from specific historic elements, many of Peck’s stories also explain the totemic associations adopted by the Aboriginal people of coastal New South Wales, adding to the anthropological record compiled by workers such as R.H. Mathews and A.W. Howitt.

Conclusion

C.W. Peck’s Australian Legends represent a significant collection of Aboriginal Dreaming stories from eastern New South Wales. Like many such stories from other parts of Australia, they reveal the intimate associations the local people shared with their natural environment, and they are an important resource in understanding aspects of the Indigenous cultures which once existed in the immediate environs of Sydney. The existence of little known works such as Peck’s Australian Legends would indicate that a full assessment of the so-called mythological and folkloric heritage of Aboriginal Australia needs to consider this, and similar material. Aboriginal creation myths and death/rebirth stories are often viewed in the context of traditional Western mythology. However, as Peck’s collection reveals, Aboriginal storytelling - whether it be called myth, legend, folk tale, ghost story or presented in the form of narrative or song - possesses a uniqueness in its all-encompassing nature in regard to the natural and metaphysical environment. It is a large body of material dating back thousands of years, and an important part of the "speaking land" which non-Aboriginal society is yet to filly grasp (Berndt 1989).

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References

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This article was originally published in the journal Australian Folklore during 2014. The above version has been subject to minor typographical correction and reformatting.

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Last updated: 23 July 2023

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