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Nunn and Reid - 2016 - Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the Australia

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Australian Geographer

ISSN: 0004-9182 (Print) 1465-3311 (Online) Journal homepage: tandfonline/loi/cage

Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the

Australian Coast Dating from More than 7000

Years Ago

Patrick D. Nunn & Nicholas J. Reid

To cite this article: Patrick D. Nunn & Nicholas J. Reid (2016) Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the Australian Coast Dating from More than 7000 Years Ago, Australian Geographer, 47:1, 11-47, DOI: 10.1080/00049182.

To link to this article: doi/10.1080/00049182.2015.

Published online: 07 Sep 2015.

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Aboriginal Memories of Inundation of the Australian Coast

Dating from More than 7000 Years Ago

Patrick D. Nunna and Nicholas J. Reidb aUniversity of the Sunshine Coast, Australia;bUniversity of New England, Australia

ABSTRACT Stories belonging to Australian Aboriginal groups tell of a time when the former coastline of mainland Australia was inundated by rising sea level. Stories are presented from 21 locations from every part of this coastline. In most instances it is plausible to assume that these stories refer to events that occurred more than about 7000 years ago, the approximate time at which the sea level reached its present level around Australia. They therefore provide empirical corroboration of postglacial sea-level rise. For each of the 21 locations, the minimum water depth (below the present sea level) needed for the details of the particular group of local-area stories to be true is calculated. This is then compared with the sea-level envelope for Australia (Lewis et al.,Quaternary Science Reviews74, 2013), and maximum and minimum ages for the most recent time that these details could have been observed are calculated. This method of dating Aboriginal stories shows that they appear to have endured since 7250–13 070 cal yearsBP(5300–11 120BC). The implications of this extraordinary longevity of oral traditions are discussed, including those aspects of Aboriginal culture that ensured effective transgenerational communication and the possibility that traditions of comparable antiquity may exist in similar cultures.

KEYWORDS Australia; Aboriginal stories; sea-level rise; coastal flooding; oral traditions; cultural continuity

Introduction

The issue of how far back in time orally transmitted human memories can reach is a topic that has exercised many scientists (Cruikshank 2007 ; McNiven and Russell 2005 ; Shetler 2007 ). The consensus appears to be that memories of particular events/persons can gen- erally survive no more than 500–800 years, largely because the original information (core) has by then become completely obscured by the layers of narrative embellishment needed to sustain transgenerational interest in a particular story (Barber and Barber 2004 ). While there are a few claims of considerably greater antiquity that are difficult to dismiss—the Klamath memory of the 7630-year-old eruption of Mt Mazama (Deur 2002 ) is one— most of these are inevitably based on sparse information from which credible arguments are difficult to construct. Most scientists hold a sceptical view of such‘deep’oral histories (Henige 2009 ; Owsley and Jantz 2001 ), a position that is prudent, although there are some who regard it as unduly cautious (Echo-Hawk 2000 ).

CONTACTPatrick D. Nunn pnunn@usc.edu

AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHER, 2016 VOL. 47, NO. 1, 11– 47 dx.doi/10.1080/00049182.2015.

grounded in observation and experience of considerable antiquity (Berndt and Berndt 1994 ; David 2002 ; Flood 1995 ). The nature of remembered Aboriginal history and geogra- phy is conveyed intergenerationally through stories, songs, dances and—more broadly— the‘law’of particular Aboriginal groups with which younger members have been ritually inculcated. With specific regard to Aboriginal oral traditions (‘stories’), these were traditionally conveyed both as narratives, generally little embellished, and as myths; these two types have been characterised as ‘ordinary stories’ and ‘sacred mythology’ (Berndt and Berndt 1996 ). The stories about coastal inundation described below include both types and these must be analysed in different ways. The ordinary stories are generally part of a narrative body that tells of places within the environment and events that took place there. Most of these events are commonplace but some are—at least to out- siders—more remarkable; the latter include stories of the sea rising to cover land that was previously utilised by people. The sacred mythology tends to focus more on changes in the landscape and the ways in which these affected its resident peoples. The changes are often attributed to the actions of divine or ancestral beings who have been offended by breaches of the law, either by individuals or groups, that they seek to punish. As elsewhere in similar cultures, such myths may incorporate infor- mation about actual events (Barber and Barber 2004 ; Vitaliano 1973 ). The key to treat- ing these stories as empirically informed is that, despite deriving from almost every part of the Australian coast, they say essentially the same thing, whether or notfiltered through myths. All the stories discussed below were collected from informants and written down fol- lowing sustained European contact in 1788 and, while it is impossible to demonstrate a lack of recorder bias, this was a time when

curious, observant, and relatively unprejudiced individuals in all parts of Australia wrote down descriptions of Aboriginal ceremonies, recorded versions of Aboriginal myths and tales and sometimes gave the texts and even occasionally the musical scores of songs. (Ross 1986 , 233) Themodus operandiof at least one early recorder of such traditions gives further con- fidence that most were rendered authentically:

Great care has been taken in this work not to state anything on the word of a white person; and, in obtaining information from the aborigines, suggestive or leading questions have been avoided as much as possible. The natives, 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. (Dawson 1881 , iii) So although the Anglo-Australian recorders of the stories below were generally keen amateurs, without the cross-cultural sophistication that would be expected from modern ethnographers, their genuine curiosity and dedication to their task are taken as a reasonable indicator of the accuracy and authenticity of these stories—an impression shored up in many cases where several independently collected sources of the same story show high levels of consistency.

AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHER 13

For those stories below which are known only through recounting by successive gen- erations of Aboriginal people, we are denied what are within Western historical practices deemed to be the normal standards of proof—of being able to point to primary or second- ary written records. At the same time it is recognised that this is a standard of proof that non-literate peoples cannot by definition satisfy, yet one which does not disprove accurate transmission. In these cases, the criteria for taking oral stories as empirically derived come from their consistency between tellers, and from the extraordinary uniformity of theme in stories from the entire fringe of Australia.

Aboriginal stories about coastal inundation: the database

The 21 locations from which stories about coastal inundation are known and described below are shown inFigure 1, which also shows the extent of the land during the Last Glacial Maximum, about 20 000 years ago, when all the places referred to in the stories as having been drowned were dry land. The geographical distribution of the places to which the stories refer is remarkably uniform. There are indications that comparable stories exist or refer to other places but these are presently inadequately known to the authors and are not therefore included here. Each story is described below in arbitrary order (1–21 inFigure 1).

Figure 1 of Australia showing the 21 coastal locations from which Aboriginal stories about coastal inundation are described in this paper. Also shown is the extent of the continental shelf that was exposed during the low sea-level stage of the Last Glacial Maximum, about 20 000 years ago.

14 P. D. NUNN AND N. J. REID

deeper water. The distribution of sea-floor sediments in the southern Spencer Gulf is con- sistent with comparatively rapid inundation (Fuller et al. 1994 ), while a similar conclusion was obtained for the northern part of the Gulf between Whyalla and Port Pirie where water is known to have deepened rapidly 8482–6402 cal yearsBP(Puttonen and Cann 2006 ). The Narrangga tribe living on Yorke Peninsula‘had a story that has been handed down through the ages’which recalled a time when Spencer Gulf was dry land,‘marshy country reaching into the interior of Australia’ (Smith 1930 , 168–169). In another account, probably from a different source, this country is described as‘a valleyfilled with a line of fresh-water lagoons’, each associated with particular types of water bird; the‘open country between the lagoons’was occupied by‘emus, curlews and mallee fowls’while elsewhere there were other creatures (Roberts and Mountford 1989 , 18). Both versions of the story describe the initialflooding of the Gulf as having been cata- strophic rather than gradual, the result of a mythical/giant kangaroo using a magic bone to cut a trench;‘the sea broke through, and came tumbling and rolling along in the track.. flowed into the lagoons and marshes which completely disappeared’ (Smith 1930 , 172). If thisflooding occurred along the lip of Spencer Gulf, where it would have been more noticeable than at any point further north, then the sea level at the time may have been as much as 50 m lower than today. Yet if the stories refer to a different part of Spencer Gulf, perhaps that along Line AB inFigure 2where the palaeo-valley narrows markedly, then the sea level would have been a minimum of 22 m below present. Thesefigures are them- selves likely to be depth minima because of the unknown thickness of sediment accumu- lated on thefloor of Spencer Gulf since it was inundated.

3.2 Island

Kangaroo Island or Karta (4405 km 2 ) lies at the mouth of Gulf St Vincent, its closest points to the Australian mainland being to the south coast of Yorke Peninsula (40 km) and across Backstairs Passage to the southwest end of the Fleurieu Peninsula (13 km) (Figure 3). The earliest and most detailed versions of the story about the drowning of Backstairs Passage were collected from the Raminyerar and Jaralde peoples of the main- land (Berndt 1940 ; Meyer 1846 ; Taplin 1873 ). All involve an ancestralfigure named Ngur- unduri whose two wives ran away from him. He pursued them relentlessly along the south coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula,finally catching sight of them as they were crossing what was then a strip of land connecting it to Kangaroo Island across Backstairs Passage. Infuriated, he caused the sea to rise and drown them; the women and their belongings became the islands known as The Pages (Meralang) and the sea never again receded from the passage. Some of the stories are specific about the nature of the land connection that formerly existed across Backstairs Passage. While some mention‘a strip of land’, most talk of a‘line of boulders’between which people could‘walk or wade’, while a few refer to the need to ‘swim’in places in order to complete the crossing. The location of the former land bridge is informed by the fact that several versions of the story report that Ngurunduri’s wives were swept south into the‘open ocean’by theflood, to a location where The Pages now lie (see Figure 3).

16 P. D. NUNN AND N. J. REID

There is also detail given in many of the stories about the nature of theflood/wave that drowned Ngurunduri’s wives and led to the subsequent inundation of Backstairs Passage. One of the older versions states that Ngurunduri commanded the waters to‘arise’and drown his wives, which produced a‘terribleflood’(Taplin 1873 ) while in another the sea came in with a‘terrific rush’(Parker 1959 ). In the most detailed extant account, ‘the waters began to come in from the west, wave upon wave, driving the two women from their course’(Berndt 1940 , 181). After his wives were drowned, Ngurunduri, desir- ous of reaching Kangaroo Island, is said to have dived into the ocean and swum there, underlying the likelihood that this event was the one that submerged the dry-land connection. The deepest part of Backstairs Passage today is more than 30 m below sea level but it is likely that the land connection would have been passable for people without watercraft when the sea level was 32–33 m lower; a land bridge may have been fully emergent when it was 35 m lower.

3.3 Bay

MacDonnell Bay is a 70 km long low sedimentary embayment between two rocky head- lands, typical of many along the south coast of Australia (Harvey 2006 ). At its northwest end lies Port MacDonnell from which once‘the land extended southward as the eye could

Figure 3 of Kangaroo Island, Backstairs Passage and part of the Fleurieu Peninsula showing bathymetry and places mentioned in the text. Bathymetry is from Australian Hydrographic Service charts Aus126 (June 2010) and Aus485 (March 2012).

AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHER 17

below the outer lip of the Bay at the western end of South Channel, something broadly confirmed by studies of marine and freshwater sediments either side of the entrance (esti- mated from data in Holdgate et al. 2001 ).

Figure 4 of Port Phillip Bay showing its present form and bathymetry (A) and details of its modern entrance (B) shown by the rectangle in A. Bathymetry is from Australian Hydrographic Service chart Aus143 (May 1973).

AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHER 19

3.5

To the east of Port Phillip Bay lies the southeast-facing Gippsland coast for which a sole Aboriginal tradition of inundation is known. It comes from the Kurnai people and states that

long ago there was land to the south of Gippsland where there is now sea, and that at that time some children of the Kurnai, who inhabited the land, in playing about found a turndun, 2 which they took home to the camp and showed to the women.‘Immediately’,it is said,‘the earth crumbled away, and it was all water, and the Kurnai were drowned.’ (Fison and Howitt 1880 , 269) The Gippsland coast represents the modern northern limit of the Bass Strait which was dry land during the Last Glacial Maximum and may have remained traversable by people until about 11 000 years ago (Porch and Allen 1995 ). There is archaeological evidence from both the islands of Bass Strait and its mainland fringes (in South Aus- tralia and Tasmania) that people were adapting around this time to the effects of sea- level rise by moving with the changing coastline (Bowdler 2014 ; Jones 1977 ). The seafloor off the Gippsland coast is generally steeper than in MacDonnell Bay (see above); if the sea level was 20 m lower, the shoreline would have been some 50 m further out to sea, while when the sea level was 50 m lower, the shoreline would have been about 100 m further seaward.

3.6 Bay and Georges River

Botany Bay, south of Sydney Harbour, marks the place where the Georges River (south) and Cooks River (north) enter the sea and is the place where Captain James Cookfirst landed in Australia in 1770. To the chagrin of later visitors, Cook described the fringes of Botany Bay as‘some of thefinest meadows in the world’whereas they,‘instead of grass, are covered with high coarse rushes, growing in a rotten spongy bog’(Tench 1996 , 176). Aboriginal (Dharawal) stories suggest that landscape changes had occurred in Botany Bay at earlier times. One tells of the time when

the river now known as the Georges River, but then known as Kai’eemah, joined with the Goolay’yari, or Cooks River andflowed through one of the swamps that once were Botany Bay. Together they thenflowed out through the place called Kurunulla, or Cronulla. (Bodkin and Andrews 2012 , 10) 3 Then, one day,‘a great storm came up, and huge waves washed into the Kai’eemah destroying much of the swampland used for food gathering. The waves crashed into the shore sofiercely that they washed over the land’(12). The coastal peoplefled inland to escape theflooding; some time later, returning to the coast at the mouth of Georges River, they found

that what they had once known was no longer. Instead of the swamps, there was a great bay, and where the Kai’eemah had met the sea there was high mountains of sand. The two rivers now no longer joined together, but ran into the sea separately. (14) It is likely that theflooding of Botany Bay recalled in this Dharawal story pre-dates Cook’s visit, not least because he sailed into the Bay and anchored on its shore. Botany

20 P. D. NUNN AND N. J. REID

The principal story concerns two Aboriginal tribes, the Noonuccal of North Strad- broke and the Nughies of Moreton. One version states that a bailer shell kept by the Noonuccal contained power over the winds and was coveted by the Nughies. When the keeper of the bailer discovered this, he summoned the winds and commanded them to blow so hard that the connection between the islands would be severed, something that caused the Nughies to become stranded thereafter on Moreton Island (Noonuccal 1990 ). In the early twentieth century, a story was

learnt from the lips of Mary Ann, the oldest native woman of Moreton Bay, that she had been told by her parents that the passage between the two islands was in their day but narrow, and that the Nooghies (of Moreton) could easily converse [across the gap] with the Noonuckles (of Stradbroke). (Welsby 1967 , vol. 2, 34) The same informant recalls when an island once existed between Moreton and North Stradbroke; she remembers that‘bopple bopple trees’ 4 grew there and that the nearby Pelican Banks were covered with prickly weed and were presumably emergent (Welsby 1967 , vol. 1, 274). A land connection between Moreton and North Stradbroke Islands may have existed when the distribution of sediments in the area was different from today. Sea level would not need to have been lower although a land connection would have been larger and easier to maintain had it been so, even by 2 m, certainly by 8 m.

3.8 and Palm Islands

Aboriginal stories exist about how it was once possible to walk across to (now) offshore Hinchinbrook and Palm Islands (Figure 6). The two islands are quite different. Hinchin- brook is larger (393 km 2 ) and is separated from the mainland by the 50 km long Hinch- inbrook Channel that is less than 1 km wide in places. Palm Island (or Bwgcolman) is smaller (55 km 2 ) and lies about 25 km off the mainland today. While many Aboriginal tribes in this area‘have stories recounting how the shore-line was once some miles further out’(Dixon 1980 , 46), the only one recorded that is specificto Hinchinbrook and Palm Islands concerns a‘legendary man’named Giɽugar who travelled across the land naming various places at a time when it was possible to walk to these islands from the (present) mainland (Dixon 1972 ). It would have been possible to walk to Hinchinbrook when the sea level was 5 m lower than today, and to Palm Island when the sea level was 22 m lower.

3.9—Great Barrier Reef

Between Cairns and the fringe of the Great Barrier Reef (Figure 7) lie a number of sizeable reefs (Green, Thetford, Moore, Elford, Sudbury) that are likely to be founded on erosional remnants of the coastal plain exposed during the Last Glacial Maximum. At this time, about 20 000 years ago, the land’s edge in most places would have been marked by a steep cliff where today the reef edge plunges down to the continental shelf. Flora Pass is likely to have been the site of a lowland river valley that cut through a wide gorge before reaching the sea.

22 P. D. NUNN AND N. J. REID

As noted above, there are numerous Aboriginal stories from this area about a time when the shoreline was further out‘where the barrier reef now stands’(Dixon 1980 , 46). According to Gungganyji informants from Cape Grafton (seeFigure 7), the barrier reef was the original coast here at a time when a man called Gunya (Goonyah) was living here. Having consumed a customarily forbiddenfish, the gods caused the sea to rise in order to drown him and his family. He evaded this fate byfleeing to the hills but‘the sea.. returned to its original limits’(Gribble 1932 ,56–57). Another more detailed version of this story was told by Dick Moses of the Gungganyji in 1973 that describes the effects of the rising sea level on a number of places and groups of people in this area. Gunya, the principal character, came across a number of places where people from different tribes had congregated,‘driven from their previous homes by theflood’, who then‘dispersed and went to their present-day territories’(Dixon 1991 , 94). A theme running through stories from the coastal Indindji (Yidiɲɖi) people of this area ‘is that the coastline was once where the barrier reef now stands.. the sea then rose and the shore retreated to its present position’(Dixon 1977 , 14). Some of these stories recall that the Aboriginal name of Fitzroy Island isgabaɽor‘lower arm’of a former main- land promontory that became partly submerged. Another recalls the name of a place

Figure 6 of the area around Hinchinbrook and Palm Islands showing an outline of the bathymetry from Australian Hydrographic Service chart Aus828 (September 2012).

AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHER 23

halfway between Fitzroy Island and King Beach that is now submerged; its name was Mudaga(the Indindji word for the pencil pine,Athrotaxis cupressoides) after the trees growing there. Another recalls a time when Green Island was four times larger than it is today, all but its northwest part having since been submerged (Dixon 1977 ). While Green Island might have been significantly larger when the sea level was 5–10 m lower, Fitzroy Island could not have been connected to the mainland unless the sea level was 30 m lower. The sizeable discrete reefs between the modern coast and the edge of the barrier reef could have been dry and contiguous when the sea level was 40–50 m lower but, if the stories truly recall a time when the shoreline was‘where the barrier reef [edge] now stands’, then the sea level would have to have been 65 m lower.

3.10 of Carpentaria and the Wellesley Islands

The widest continental shelf around Australia that was exposed during the Last Glacial Maximum (seeFigure 1) lies off the north coast of Australia, particularly off Arnhem Land and within the Gulf of Carpentaria, which was a lake within the land bridge connecting Australia and New Guinea at this time (Chivas et al. 2001 ; Yokoyama et al. 2001 ). Owing to the width of this continental shelf, postglacial sea-level rise would have caused more rapid shoreline retreat here than in any other part of the Australian coastline, making the phenomenon more noticeable to its inhabitants than perhaps those elsewhere. There are Aboriginal stories about the formation of the Gulf of Carpentaria, but since these are generalised rather than specific they are mentioned here only in passing. The common story, similar to one explaining the origin of Spencer Gulf (see above), talks of a giant kangaroo who thrust a magic digging-bone into the ground where it excavated a trench.‘White-capped waves and a torrent of water’rushed along the channel the bone had made,‘spilling into the marsh lands,flooding the lagoons until they overflowed... that is how the great gulf was formed’(Reed 1965 , 192). The Aboriginal inhabitants of the Wellesley Islands (Figure 8) in the southern part of the Gulf of Carpentaria have a rich extant body of oral tradition that includes‘oral accounts of channels being cut between islands elaborated into sacred histories of ancestral beings’(Memmott et al. 2006 , 42). Several accounts recall a time when the Wellesley Islands were part of a mainland peninsula but then the‘seagull woman’named Garn- guur dragged her raft back and forth across its neck causing it to be submerged and the islands to form (Isaacs 1980 ; Roughsey 1971 ). Stories with this theme are told to explain the creation of at leastfive islands in the Wellesley group (Memmott and Trigger 1998 ). For the Wellesley Islands to be joined to the mainland, the sea level would have to have been perhaps just 5 m lower, although substantial connections would have existed when the sea level was 10 m lower.

3.11 Island

Like several coastal Aboriginal groups, the Yolŋu people of northeast Arnhem Land have a knowledge of the area’s geography that includes places claimed to have been submerged for as much as 10 000 years (Corn 2005 ).

AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHER 25

Figure 8 of the Wellesley Islands and adjacent mainland, southern Gulf of Carpentaria. Bathyme- try is from Australian Hydrographic Service chart Aus303 (June 1996).

Figure 9 of Elcho Island and the adjoining mainland showing an outline of the bathymetry from Australian Hydrographic Service chart Aus716 (September 1995).

26 P. D. NUNN AND N. J. REID

3.14 and Melville Islands

The large islands of Bathurst and Melville (Figure 10A), themselves separated only by the narrow Apsley Strait, are separated from the Australian mainland by a 30 km deepwater channel in the east (Melville to Cape Don) and a shallower, island-dotted 25 km wide

Figure 10 of Bathurst and Melville Islands and adjoining parts of the mainland including Cape Don. Detailed bathymetry of the most likely crossing (B) is from Australian Hydrographic Service chart Aus722 (June 1997).

28 P. D. NUNN AND N. J. REID

channel in the south (Melville to mainland via the Vernon Islands). There are no known Aboriginal (Tiwi) stories about a crossing of the former channel but several that talk of people crossing the latter:

In the beginning of the Tiwi world there was complete darkness.. one day an old blind woman, named Mudangkala, appeared miraculously.. Mudangkala crawled along, the freshwater followed her.. of water continued to increase and is today known as Clarence Strait. She continued to move over the land known as Bathurst Island tillfinally waterflowed on to form what is now known as Apsley Strait. (Sims 1978 , 165)

This is most plausibly interpreted as the memory of a person crossing from the southern mainland via the Vernons to Melville, perhaps through a combination of walking, wading and swimming. Another version of the story implies that it recalls thefirst settlement of these islands:

The Tiwi hold that their islands were created by a woman, in this case an old blind lady named Murtankala [Mudangkala].. the distant past the land was covered in darkness and contained no geographical features, animals or humans. Below the earth lived some spirit people, including Murtankala and her three children. One day she dug her way up to the land’s surface. As she crawled about searching for food for herself and her infant chil- dren she gradually carved out the outlines of the Tiwi Islands.. in behind Murtankala to surround the islands. (Morris 2001 , 14) Key to both accounts is that water‘followed’the old woman, a detail that could be inter- preted as meaning that after people reached these islands from the mainland, the sea level rose thereby making it impossible for them to cross subsequently without using a boat or raft. The easiest crossing from the mainland to the Tiwi Islands is via the Vernon Islands (Figure 10B) and, if this was the route taken by Mudangkala (perhaps an early Tiwi settler group), then it is likely to have been possible without watercraft only when the sea level was about 12 m lower, but even then it may have been necessary to swim or wade, which may explain the‘crawling’allusion. Had the sea level been 20 m lower, it is likely that the crossing would have been circuitous yet significantly easier.

3.15 Reef

There are several stories known among the Bardi and Jawi people that recall a time when Brue Reef (Juljinabur), which is today awash at high tide, was an inhabited island. 7 One set of stories originates with a group of men whose boat drifted from Tallon Island (close to the mainland) to Juljinabur where they encountered cannibals from whom they eventually escaped. Subsequent infighting among the cannibals of Juljinabur is said in some stories to explain why the island later sank and became a reef. An explanation in another story speaks more generally about one of the ancestral beings causing the island to be inundated by seawater to punish its anthropophagous inhabitants. A plausible interpretation is that these stories date from a time when Brue Reef, unlike today, was habitable and supported a population likely to have numbered 10–100 individ- uals, judging from the size of the land area and the detail in the stories. This may have been possible if the sea level was 4 m lower than today but more convincing were the sea level

AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHER 29

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