82
Australia
Rhonda M.Bunbury
Aboriginal NarrativesChildren’s narratives in Australia might be said to have begun 40,000 years ago when
oral telling of stories was an integral part of Aboriginal daily living. People who live
tradition-oriented lives in Australia confirm that ancient stories are retold today with
strict ownership customs ensuring their continuity and accuracy. Both adults and
children were the intended audience for stories and for these public or ‘outside versions
of the stories, there is no distinction. Collections of traditional stories do exist in both
contemporary and historically significant editions, and writers and collectors have made
varying degrees of effort to reproduce accurate written translations of the oral stories.
Notable examples are Mary Ann Fitzgerald’s King Bungarees Phyalla: Stories, Illustrative
of Manners and Customs that Prevailed among Australian Aborigines (1891), Langloh
Parker’s Australian Legendary Tales: Folklore of the Noongahburrahs, as Told to the
Piccaninnies (1896, 1978), Daisy Bates’s Tales Told to Kabbarli (collected in the 1930s
and retold by Barbara Ker Wilson, 1972) and Catherine H.Berndt’s Land of the Rainbow
Snake: Aboriginal Children’s Stories and Songs from Western Arnhem Land (1977). The
‘inside stories, which are not intended for children, are not at issue here as they are
secret and sacred. In the ‘Western world of contemporary Australia, it is the advent of
print which begins to enable non-Aboriginal cultures of Australia to focus on Aboriginal
stories which can be said to be specifically for children.
Today, however, Kooris (Aboriginal in south-eastern Australia) object to the idea that
publication of these ‘outside traditional stories is relevant to their life in contemporary
Australia. What can traditional stories say about the life of the young Koori footballer in
the heart of Sydney? Stories written by Kooris about contemporary Koori life are needed,
and it is here that the most striking gap in Australian publishing exists. One
contemporary Koori story-teller, Maureen Watson, reminds her listeners that Captain
Cook did not ‘discover Australia and it is no accident that such stories which reflect
Australia’s origins still receive a mixed reception in a land which has just begun to
acknowledge that the country was not terra nullus (empty land) when the Caucasian
explorers arrived, which has only recently passed an Act of Parliament granting its
Aboriginal citizens land rights (1994), and which debates whether or not its constitution
ought to become republican, hence formally severing its remaining links to the