by Patrick Nunn
Great care has been taken in this work not to state anything on the word of a white person; and, in obtaining information from Aboriginal people, suggestive or leading questions have been avoided as much as possible. The informants, in their anxiety to please, are apt to coincide with the questioner, and thus assist him in arriving at wrong conclusions; hence it is of the utmost importance to be able to converse freely with them in their own language. This inspires them with confidence, and prompts them to state facts, and to discard ideas and beliefs obtained from the white people, which in many instances have led to misrepresentations. 7
Such fine words do not, of course, mean that every Aboriginal story discussed in the rest of this chapter should be uncritically regarded as an authentic Indigenous original – it would be naive to suppose so – or that the rendering of these stories captures all the nuances, indeed all the details, of the original oral tradition. Nor can it be assumed that some stories do not contain an overprint of European thought, imposed either by their Indigenous narrators (who had inevitably had some exposure to the colonisers’ culture) or by non-Indigenous recorders. Yet even with such caveats, the fact that stories from similar locations contain much the same detail suggests that they are reporting much the same thing. And, of course, the fact that stories from at least 21 locations along the coast of modern Australia, measuring some 47,000km (29,200 miles) in length, can be plausibly interpreted in the same way – as memories of a time when the ocean rose across the coastline (and never receded) – strengthens their interpretation as recalling postglacial sea-level rise, an event around Australia that ended about 7,000 years ago.
The world was plunged into the last great ice age about 90,000 years ago. As a result of falling temperatures, in many places evaporated ocean water was precipitated back on to the land in solid form – as snow or ice. Huge ice sheets developed on many higher latitude continental areas, trapping the former ocean water, which resulted in the ocean surface (sea level) beginning to fall. Around 20,000 years ago during the coldest time of the ice age – the Last Glacial Maximum – the global sea level was around 120m (400ft) lower than it is today. Then global temperatures began rising, ice started to melt and much of the water that had been trapped in terrestrial ice sheets began to be returned to the oceans, causing the sea level to start rising. As discussed in more detail in Chapter 4, this process was neither continuous nor monotonic, but for all that it had a massive transformative effect on the world’s coasts – and the peoples who occupied them. For example, one plausible estimate has it that 14m (46ft) of the coastline of northern Australia would have been (laterally) submerged every day during the more rapid periods of postglacial sea-level rise. This was surely something that would have caught the attention of coastal dwellers and made it well suited for recording in oral traditions.
Australia’s Aboriginal stories about postglacial drowning are of two types, what those tireless students of Aboriginal anthropology – Ronald and Catherine Berndt – termed ‘ordinary stories’ and ‘sacred mythology’. The first type are narratives, apparently little embellished, which may describe a time when the sea level was lower than it is today, and the shoreline of a particular part of Australia was consequently further seawards. Such narratives invariably describe what then happened, how the ocean rose, flooding familiar landscapes – places that had names and historical associations for local people – and transforming their environments and their livelihood possibilities. The second type are myths, often alluding to changes to coastal environments similar to those described in the narratives, but explaining these changes in terms of the actions of particular individuals – sometimes super human, more often non-human (like giants or god-like beings with magical powers). Both types of story can be interpreted in the same way. They report a time when the sea level rose across the land, flooding and then drowning it until it came to appear the way it does today.
A map showing the 21 locations from which stories or groups of stories have been obtained is shown in Figure 3.1. The descriptions start in the south at Spencer Gulf.
Figure 3.1 The 21 locations along the coast of modern Australia from which Aboriginal stories about coastal drowning have been collected.
On 20 March 1802, four months into the first reported circumnavigation of Australia, Matthew Flinders, an English sea captain, steered his ship Investigator into a ‘gulph’ that was duly explored. Disappointed that this was evidently not the east coast of Terra Australis, that the water at the head of the gulf was as salty as the ocean and that despite abundant signs of habitation ‘we had not the good fortune to meet with any of the people’, Flinders contented himself with naming the place Spencer Gulf, after the First Lord of the British Admiralty at the time the Investigator was commissioned for this voyage.8
The Investigator was being watched. Even if we did not know this, we would consider it likely, of course, but we do know because local people have a memory of this landmark event. The Aboriginal people occupying the western shores of Spencer Gulf – the Nawu – have a story of a beautiful white bird that ‘came flying in from over the ocean, then slowly stopped and, having folded its wings [its sails], was tied up so that it could not get away’.9
Spencer Gulf is a triangular-shaped indentation, 300km (186 miles) in length, along the coast of South Australia, bounded on the west by the Eyre Peninsula and to the east by the Yorke Peninsula. Spencer Gulf is a graben, a fault-bounded depression that has been slowly subsiding for at least a couple of million years. Yet since the rate of subsidence – perhaps less than a tenth of a millimetre a year – is so slow, around a thousandth of the average rate of postglacial sea-level rise, it can effectively be ignored in any consideration of the stories that recall the drowning of Spencer Gulf. The Gulf is comparatively shallow, its floor buried beneath tens of metres of sediment laid down by the rivers that flow into it, as well by the periodic marine incursions – marking the terminations of ice ages of the last few million years – that have affected it. As shown in Figure 3.2, over the 300km length of Spencer Gulf, its floor drops only some 50m (165ft). Thereafter, when you cross its southern lip, the sea floor plunges rapidly downwards.
Figure 3.2 Spencer Gulf in South Australia.
The shallowness of Spencer Gulf – most of it is less than 50m (165ft) below sea level – means that it was dry for tens of thousands of years during the last ice age, for most of which people were living in Australia. Some eyewitness accounts of this time have come down to us today. The stories about a time when Spencer Gulf was dry land are part of the history of the Narungga (or Narangga) people, who have lived for millennia on the Yorke Peninsula. The earliest written account dates from 1930 and tells that the Narungga ‘had a story that has been handed down [orally] through the ages. It is a tale of … when there was no Spencer’s [sic] Gulf, but only marshy country reaching into the interior of Australia’,10 exactly what you might expect if such a low-gradient area of land were emergent today.
The story goes that some groups of the animals that occupied dry-land Spencer Gulf had disagreements with each other.11 The birds in particular ‘felt so superior to the rest of creation that they prohibited the [other] animals and reptiles from drinking at the lagoons’ that traced the axis of Spencer Gulf. Thus, the story continues, ‘began a long conflict in which many were killed, and large numbers of land-dwellers died of thirst’.12 This sounds like an analogy of a human territorial conflict, perhaps exacerbated by a prolonged drought of the kind that often affects Australia during El Niño events.
This situation caused considerable anxiety to the leaders of other groups of animals not directly involved in the conflict – particularly the emus, the kangaroos and the willie wagtails13 – so an eminent kangaroo, after a revelatory dream, was led to a giant magical thigh bone belonging to one of his dead ancestors. He pointed this at the mouth of Spencer Gulf, causing the sea to enter it, then dragging the bone behind him to create a furrow, he walked towards the head of the Gulf. ‘The sea broke through,
and came tumbling and rolling along in the track cut by the kangaroo-bone. It flowed into the lagoons and marshes, which completely disappeared’, forcing the animals to live in harmony once more.14 Setting aside the metaphors, it is again plausible to interpret this as an effect of the rising postglacial sea level overtopping the lip, 50m (165ft) below the present sea level, at the mouth of Spencer Gulf, and rapidly flooding its interior, which had the fortuitous outcome of forcibly separating warring tribes.
Flinders knew that the land on either side of Spencer Gulf was inhabited, for he saw smoke from many fires, some even large enough to navigate by, and heard dogs howling at night and possibly even the sounds of human voices. The situation was quite different when he left the area to continue his circumnavigation. His next landing took place on Kangaroo Island, a 4,400km2 (1,700mi2) island some 30–40km (19–25 miles) off the mainland where in contrast: ‘neither smokes, nor other marks of inhabitants’ could he see:
There was little doubt … that this extensive piece of land was separated from the continent; for the extraordinary tameness of the kanguroos [sic] and the presence of seals upon the shore, concurred with the absence of all traces of men to show that it was not inhabited. 15
Kangaroo Island in 1802 was indeed uninhabited, since mainland Aboriginal peoples did not have watercraft that were able to successfully negotiate the often turbulent-water passages separating it from the mainland. They probably also had little inclination to try to reach it, because to the local Ramindjeri people Kangaroo Island was known as Karta – the Land of the Dead – the place to which spirits of the recently deceased travelled. And yet, as has become abundantly clear from scientific studies of Kangaroo Island, it was once home to a sizeable living human population. The earliest hint of this came from studies in the 1930s that identified stone tools scattered around a former lagoon in the island’s south, a discovery that prompted more focused archaeological interest. Several cave and rock-shelter sequences were later analysed that showed people to have been living there at least 16,000 years ago, and probably far earlier, when Kangaroo Island was attached to the Australian mainland during the lower sea levels of the last ice age.
Why, you might justifiably ask, were no people there when Flinders made landfall in 1802? To understand the reason for this, we might note that it was not just Kangaroo Island that was uninhabited at this time, but also many other smaller islands off the mainland (although not large Tasmania). The answer seems to lie in island size and its associated capacity to sustain a viable human population, particularly after sea-level rise caused ocean distances separating particular islands from mainland shores to become too long to be regularly or even easily traversed. At such a point, the islanders would have to have made a difficult decision: decamp to the mainland while they still could, or stay on their island without the certainty that they would be able to retain contact with the mainland. We know nothing of the former, but we do know that some took the second option and stayed put. Whether their descendants all subsequently died on the island, perhaps unable to access sufficient food and water during a prolonged drought, or unsuccessfully attempted to escape its confines, is unknown. However, what is certain from the archaeological evidence is that a once-thriving population on Kangaroo Island had completely disappeared by about 2,000 years ago, leaving ‘a classic mystery story’.16
The numerous Aboriginal stories about the drowning of the shortest land connection – named Backstairs Passage – between Kangaroo Island and the Australian mainland (shown in Figure 3.3) all begin with ‘a tall and powerful man’ named Ngurunduri (sometimes Ngurunderi or Nurunderi), an ancestor to many Aboriginal groups in the region who is said to have travelled down the Murray River valley to the coast.17 Ngurunduri had two wives and, in most versions of the story, gave them cause to run away from him.18 With vengeance in mind, he pursued them from the mouth of the Murray River to Kangjeinwal, where he could hear them bathing at King’s Point.19 When he reached King’s Point he saw them at Newland’s Head, and when he reached there he saw them in the distance walking along long Tankalilla Beach. His wives spotted him coming, so began to hurry, intent on reaching the sanctuary of Kangaroo Island, which at that time ‘was almost connected with the mainland, and it was possible for people to walk across’.20 Finally, the two women reached Tjirbuk and, gathering their belongings, began to walk across to Kangaroo Island. When they had got halfway Ngurunduri reached Tjirbuk and, knowing that they sought sanctuary on the island, he roared, ‘Pink’ul’uŋ’urn ‘praŋukurn’ (Fall waters-you).21
Figure 3.3 Kangaroo Island, Backstairs Passage and the Fleurieu Peninsula.
Then the ocean rose, drowning Backstairs Passage, and ‘churned’, drowning the two women and carrying them southwards, where they were turned to stone, forming the Meralang (islands). The larger of these three islands is the older woman, the next in size the other, and the smallest the basket she threw off in a vain attempt to survive. In most accounts, the water rise is portrayed as catastrophic, a ‘terrible flood’ in an 1873 version,22 ‘tempestuous waves’ in another.23 This detail may well have been added as a plausible explanation of how Backstairs Passage – formerly remembered as traversable – became inundated. But its drowning is the key point of all these stories, many of which tell that after Ngurunduri’s wives were literally petrified, he travelled to Kangaroo Island … but not on foot. It seems that because the crossing was now permanently underwater, Ngurunduri dived into the ocean and swam to Kangaroo Island, from which he eventually ascended to Waieruwar – the sky.24
Any route across Backstairs Passage today involves ocean depths of more than 30m (100ft). It might have been possible to cross by walking, wading and perhaps a few short swims when the sea level was 32m (105ft) lower than it is today; the Yatala Shoal, which is less than 10m (33ft) deep today, may have been a critical staging post. Yet it would take a sea level that was 35m (115ft) lower than it is today for a land bridge to be fully emergent here. So the most parsimonious interpretation is that the wealth of Aboriginal stories about the crossing of Backstairs Passage dates from a time in the past when the sea level was this much lower.
Much of the south coast of Australia comprises massive bays formed by an alternation between rocky headlands and long, crescentic sweeps of windswept sandy dune-backed beaches that often impound – except during occasional floods – some of the rivers that sluggishly drain this part of the continent. One such bay is MacDonnell Bay, a place where the land is said once to have extended much further out to sea. There is only one version of the Aboriginal story that describes and explains what happened. It belongs to the Bunganditj people and recounts how this land then appeared: ‘a splendid forest of evergreen trees, including a wattle out of which oozed a profusion of delicious gum, and a rich carpet of beautiful flowers and grass’.25 Unfortunately, the forest was owned by a man who detested trespassers, so when one day he found a woman up a wattle tree stealing gum,26 he told her he would drown her for her crime:
Filled with rage, he seated himself on the grass, extended his right leg towards Cape Northumberland (Kinneang) and his left towards Green Point, raised his arms above his head, and in a giant voice called upon the sea to come and drown the woman. The sea advanced, covered his beautiful land, and destroyed the offending woman. It returned no more to its former bed, and thus formed the present coast of MacDonnell Bay.
If, again, this strikes you as a bit far-fetched, then consider that a bare-bones story about the effects of the rising sea level drowning this coastline may not have been considered sufficiently memorable for oral transmission across many generations. Yet a story with a moral would last much longer, for then storytellers would understand its importance for proper behaviour while listeners learnt that disobedience is inevitably punished.
There is no mistaking this story for a flood story or even the recollection of a giant wave (like a tsunami), for the sea ‘returned no more to its former bed’. This detail, so common in the Aboriginal coastal drowning stories
outlined in this chapter, is invariably absent from the flood stories that are part of the oral traditions of coastal cultures in most other parts of the world.
The story from MacDonnell Bay is vague about exactly how much land might have been lost. So if we suppose that it refers to a time when the sea level was 15m (50ft) lower than it is today, then the ‘splendid forest’ might have covered an area of land extending 50–70m (165–230ft) offshore. Alternatively, had the sea level been 50m (165ft) lower at the time of the story, the land might have extended several hundred metres out to sea, perhaps indeed ‘as far as the eye could carry’.
The next stop on our journey around the coast is at the doorstep of Melbourne, one of Australia’s largest cities, which is built around the mouth of the Yarra River. Melbourne is sited where it is because of the proximity of the 1,930km2 (745mi2) almost-enclosed harbour of Port Phillip Bay, which opens today to the Southern Ocean only through a narrow 2km (1¼ mile) wide passage (The Rip). In the heyday of cross-ocean trade, long before Australian cities were connected to one another by road, the shelter afforded to ships by such an extraordinary place was valued hugely (Figure 3.4).
The skeleton of Port Phillip Bay developed millions of years ago, when land was uplifted along the seaward side of what was then a sizeable coastal inlet, effectively blocking it off from the sea; on the western side the Bellarine Peninsula is a horst, an upthrust block, while along the southern and eastern sides successive phases of movement along the Selwyn Fault produced the Nepean and Mornington Peninsulas respectively. Enclosed and with several rivers debouching into it, over time Port Phillip Bay has become choked with sediments, mostly washed down by rivers but supplemented with wind-blown material and, particularly in its southern parts, marine sands washed in by waves. Yet when the sea level dropped during the last ice age, Port Phillip Bay – which is no deeper today than 25m (82ft) below sea level – dried out. The rivers cut channels through the exposed sediments and found their way to the sea. When the sea level rose once more after the last ice age ended, some of those former outlets became plugged by massive amounts of sediment, so that even when the ocean surface had risen above the level of the floor of Port Phillip Bay, it remained dry. Later, of course, the sea forced its way through at least one of those sediment plugs – that is where The Rip is today – and flooded the Bay, but it is also possible that subsequently it became blocked again and Port Phillip Bay dried up once more, even though the ocean surface was higher than its floor.27
