26 Aborigine Australian Short Stories

Dr. Pinky Isha

Content

• Early Aborigine Writing

• Aborigine culture and Myths or Legends

• Aboriginal fiction writers

• Australian Children’s Literature

• Another Acclaimed Australian Writer

• Aborigine Creation Myths and Stories

• References

Early Aborigine Writing:

Ideas about the term ‘aborigines’ before the European settlement in 1788 were for the most part derogatory. William Dampier saw them as ‘the miserable people in the world’, and Captain James Cook too had a similar version to offer. Aboriginal people and their culture was looked down as not worthy of respect, a barbaric horde of naked, treacherously armed, and extremely coward creatures who acted when fear prompted them. In the earliest poetry emanating from the colonies, the Aborigines were portrayed more as objects of curiosity (like other antipodean fauna) than as individuals in their own right. With the spread of exploration and settlement, contact between white men and the outlying tribal aborigines intensified. In the sphere of the novel, one of the earliest to feature the aboriginal experience was the anonymously authored Alfred Dudley; or The Australian Settler (1830). This is a rare depiction in fiction of some possible humanity granted to the Aborigine. Bushrangers and Aborigines, true to the spirit of Australia were to be feared and kept at bay. In Tales of the Colonies: Or The Adventures of an Emigrant (1843) and The Bushranger of Van Diemen’s Land (1846) and in later texts like Thomas McCombie’s Arabin –Or The Adventures of a Colonist in New South Wales (1845) such instances of Aborigine misconceptions are quite rampant.

Alexander Harris’s The Emigrant Family: Or, The Story of an Australian Settler (1849) and James Tucker’s Ralph Rashleigh, written in 1840s, but not published in full until 1952, hint at an important divide—the appropriation of farm lands by squatters and resentment from the aborigines whose natures were otherwise peaceful and non-avaricious. The squatters had the most prolonged and closest contact with the Aborigines; a contact that inevitably entailed dispossession and violence. Memoirs and reminiscences reflecting the dynamics of such a relationship continued in the second half of the 19th century. Amateurish and ethnographic account of the Aborigines continued from the 1840s onwards. In the second half of the 19th century, the aboriginal presence in literature was more pronounced, with poets like Charles Harpur, in his poem An Aboriginal Mother’s lament or Ned Connor; or Henry Kendall’s early Aboriginal Poems like The Creek of the Four Graves or Aboriginal Death  Songs (1862). Fiction offered very less sensitization of the already prevailing Aboriginal stereotype. During the turn of the century, no magic line of demarcation in the mutual relationship between the Aboriginals and the Whites surfaced. It was only after the Second World War that acceptance of Aboriginals through parliamentary legislation and their integration and rights, became a topic of concern and consensus.

Aborigine culture and Myths or Legends:

Against the backdrop of these facts and ideas, one needs to look deeper into what shapes the Aboriginal sensibility, while integrating aspects of storytelling in a narrative mode. The study and validation of Aboriginal culture through Aboriginal myth and ritual was a direction in this respect. The publication of Catherine Langloh Parker’s Australian Legendary Tales (1896) and More Australian Legendary Tales (1898) was the starting point for the popularization of Aboriginal tribal stories and songs. In the 1930s, the Jindyworoback desire to present Aboriginal lore as an attempt to understand, revive and re-establish the cultural topography of Australia better was imbibed by Roland Robinson whose numerous volumes include: Legend and Dreaming (1952), The Feathered Serpent (1956) and Aboriginal Myths and Legends (1966). Aboriginal writers such as Kath Walker, Dick Roughsey and David Unaipon took an upper hand in the collection and dissemination of tribal stories and legends. Various internationally acclaimed volumes of Aboriginal lore have appeared in recent times, e.g. The Dreamtime Book (1973) with paintings by Ainslie Roberts and text by Charles P. Mountford; Australian Dreaming (1980) compiled and edited by Jennifer Isaacs and Dreamtime: The Aboriginal Heritage (1981) are a few names to reckon with.

Aboriginal Fiction Writers:

At the turn of the century, Aborigine fiction writers include Mrs Aeneas Gunn, whose two short stories The Little Black Princess (1905) and We of the Never Never (1908) are classic examples of the patronizing but totally short-sighted approach of many well intentioned Australians towards the Aboriginal. In her Tales of Elsey Station and the Never Never Land, the Aboriginal is a cross breed between a flawed human and a lovable domestic animal. It goes to the credit of the English biologist E.L. Grant Watson who produced an interesting fictional treatment of Aboriginals, but this was due to his close proximity with fellow biologist Radcliffe Brown and Daisy Bates; people who inhabited and worked with Kimberley Blacks and diseased Blacks from the Bernier Island Isolation Hospital. His story ‘Out There’ portrays the triangular relationship between a white man with a white woman and a Black woman simultaneously. It is for the very first time that a sense of harmony and purpose, even grace is infused into this mutual relationship that exists for itself and in its own right. ‘Out There’ is a perfect example of the long lived stigma of a White man who has morally degraded himself by being a Black. Through their fictional accounts, Vance Palmer and Katharine Susannah Prichard introduced new dimensions of Black-White sexual relations which are shortly liberating, but circuitous and often deadly in their impact on the moral fabric of society. Palmer’s The Man Hamilton (1928) and Men are Human and K.S. Prichard’s Coonardoo are perfect examples of this abiding dichotomy in Black versus White male-female relationships. This sexual divide between Black and White races is taken up by other short stories of Prichard like ‘Happiness ‘and ‘The Cooboo’.

Kath Walker better known as Oodgeroo of the Tribe Noonuccal from 1988 onwards was a seminal figure in the field of indigenous contemporary Australia. She wrote a collection of stories published as Stradbroke Dreamtime (1972), the first section consisting of stories taking into account memories from her childhood on North Stradbroke Island, and the second stories from ‘The Old and New Dreamtime’ (Dreamtime symbolising the mythological past of the Aborigines). These stories spelt an altogether new engagement with chronicling traditional lore and making excursions into the mythically illumined landscapes of her country. This preoccupation with the landscape as the centre and focal point of consciousness makes us realise the concept of indigenous spirituality that goes hand in hand with the perpetuation of Aboriginal culture. In the 1980s and 1990s Walker published books of legends and drawings, including Father Sky and Mother Earth (1981); The Rainbow Serpent (1988) written with her younger son; Australian Legends and Landscapes (1990)and Australia’s Unwritten History: More Legends of Our Land (1992). Beier edited a book of Walker’s artwork Quandamooka: The Art of Kath Walker, in 1985. Most of her writings and drawings in these texts relate to her homeland of Minjerriba, but she also collected stories from elsewhere. The first three of these works in particular take up a concern with the land and environmental issues, wedded to reform and education as is reflected and reiterated again and again in Australian Legends and Landscapes.

Australian Children’s Literature:

Literature besides recreating the lost aborigine world has also to its credit acclaimed writers straddling the adult world and making cross-overs to the arena of Children’s Literature. Colin Thiele, for example is one such writer who has for more than fifty years delighted children, parents and teachers with his stories. More than twenty of his books remain in print from a highly productive writing life, with additions every year. In Thiele there is a remarkable humane quality that appeals to children, coupled with an abiding love of the Australian landscape and its people within the confines of even the simplest of stories. Thiele said in a 2002 interview that he has enjoyed writing part-time—“The part-time writer can walk out  and hold on to the integrity of the book”. Thiele’s collection The Rim of the Morning: Six Stories (1966) was found in many school libraries in the 1960s and 70s. One of the six stories, ‘Storm Boy’ became the best known of Thiele’s works. The story of Storm Boy and his Pelican, Mr. Percival is known to thousands of children and was made into a successful movie with the help of the South Australian Film Corporation. Storm Boy lives with his father on the Coorong, a wilderness more beautiful than one can imagine, on a southern Australian coast fraught with an array of birds and fishermen whose only errand is living by and living in the lap of nature. Storm Boy spends his days happily with his father, an old aboriginal friend and his pelican on the beach. From this beach, Mr. Percival helps to rescue a distressed ship, but in the process he is shot by duck-hunters because he learns to frighten away the ducks from their shotguns. The death of Mr. Percival teaches young Storm Boy some hard lessons about the fragility of life and the importance of mutual trust and respect, not only between people, but also between people and those living creatures that depend upon them. With the Pelican dead and no longer dependent upon Storm Boy, he decides to leave his home on the Coorong and go to school in Adelaide to read and write. Growing up is therefore a hard lesson that is full of the pains and tribulations of life and never a happy journey without a nagging awareness of loss.

Storm Boy (1963) is therefore a simple, poignant story but with significant ideas that are reiterated in continual threads throughout his works. Four themes or abiding concerns surface in most of Thiele’s works. Firstly is his unmistakable love for the Australian landscape, from the farming areas in South Australia, where he spent his boyhood to the wild and treacherous coastline of the Coorong and coastal regions near the great Australian Bight. The second theme that runs muted through most of his works is also the primacy of the natural cycles of life as surpassing our own private time-zones or a person’s lifetime. Nature or the natural world of fauna and flora display a commendable urge to survive and assert amidst all odds and so people should go in tandem in understanding and empathizing with these natural forces they can’t do without. The third theme is Thiele’s sensitivity for those hard working people (the fisherman community) who tire out themselves through struggles and hardships inherent in their fate, and meet the odds of survival with admiring resilience of spirit, more praise worthy and strong than the unpredictable sea and the shifting of seasons. The fourth and possibly the most significant idea that runs through Thiele’s work is the courage children display under adversity, both under conservative parents and teachers; or under situations that are beyond their control. Growing up and achieving independence in Thiele’s stories come at a great cost, from a deeper realisation of the idea that one has to accept what cannot be changed. From Thiele’s illustrated story books for children, to stories written for adult readers, these four categories sustain themselves throughout. One has to find out the really tender, sensitive and often precarious relationship between human and animal creatures. Other important stories of Thiele are Albatross Two (1979), The Hammerhead Light (1976), Shatterbelt (1987) and its sequel Aftershock (1992). Also it is to be remembered that Thiele’s childhood depictions are in no way idealised. Blue Fin (which tells the stories of Tuna fishermen) 1969, was the recipient of a highly commendable award by the Children’s Book Council of Australia.

Another Acclaimed Australian Writer:

David Malouf is another distinguished international Australian writer whose lyrical mappings of identity, place and the body also bear upon questions of belonging and national identity. He is an author to date of at least six volumes of poetry, several editions of selected poems, six novels, two novellas and three short story collections, many autobiographical and prose non-fiction publications, a series of Libretti for opera and an original play. In Malouf’s two volumes of short stories; Antipodes and Dreamstuff, (2000) there is an enormous diversity of content and thematic coherence. In Antipodes which received positive reviews, Australia is largely set as an object of comparison to other European climes and the romance of the far against the drabness of the near is often the subject matter of these stories. “Southern Skies” and “Old Country” treat such themes while sub-urban and familiar perspectives surface in stories like “The Empty Lunch Tin” and “Bad Blood”. “Jacko’s Reach” and “Closer” play out on the intersection between desire, dreams and reality, and their transmuting and transcending boundaries that blur distinctions between the home and the far.

Aborigine Creation Myths and Stories:

The collection and publication of Aboriginal myths and legends have in recent years attracted both Black and White writers. These stories of the “Dreamtime”are different creation myths which explain how creation came into being; such as the story of the EagleHawk and Crow from NSW; about how many years ago the birds and animals were in human form and how two warriors from the Ngiyaampaa people ultimately ushered this change and transformation. Another story is that of Emu and the Jabiru from the Marrkula clan in Arnhem Land, which comes across as a story of greed between two brothers-in-law and the creation of the Emu and the Jabiru. It also offers an insight into the life of the Gapuwiayk people. Needless to say, Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, is rich in Dreaming stories, art and dance. The importance of land within Yolngu culture and the role that education plays in encouraging respect for other cultures is also to be considered; therefore these myths and legends don’t exist in isolation. The story behind the creation of two mountains and an island comes from the Yuin-Monaro people, on the far south coast of New South Wales and the main mountain- Gulaga-holds deep significance for the people. The story of the mountains coming into being is itself known as Gulaga. The idea of how the water got to the plains is a legacy from the Butchulla people of Fraser Island. When travelling through the arid regions of Australia, Aboriginal people would move from waterhole to waterhole. Many stories of these creation myths are meant to be told to children to create an awareness of Australian Aborigine culture and popular beliefs; these stories are steeped in ecological insights and provide explanations for the phenomenal aspects of nature, like the change of seasons, the creation of mountain ranges, rivers and movable as well as immovable aspects of nature that sustain, threaten and nourish our lives from birth to death. Indigenous aborigine stories have another interesting facet of existence in our day to day life; the drawings, etchings and pictographic signs and symbols of dreamtime on mountains and caves, hint at an oral tradition that is around 7000 years old.

One major aspect of Australian Aborigine culture is indulging in a lot of practices and ceremonies that have as their forte the reverence for the land and an abiding concern with oral traditions. Language groupings in tribal areas exhibit a range of individual cultures and Australian Aboriginal art has existed for thousands of years and ranges from ancient rock art to modern-day watercolor landscapes. Among a few initiation rituals of the Australian aborigine may be mentioned the ‘Bora’ in which young boys become men; a ‘Corroboree’ which means a ceremonial meet of Aboriginal people; a ‘smoking ceremony’ is likewise a cleansing ritual performed on special occasions and a Tjurunga or churinga on the other hand are objects of religious significance by Central Australian Aboriginal Arrernte (Aranda, Arundta) groups. Another very important ceremony of the Australian Aborigine is a ‘Walkabout’ which refers to a commonly held belief that Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey or rite of passage during adolescence by living away from their family or group, or by moving away from their area. A corollary to this concept is the idea of death which is viewed as a transition to another life altogether, this is not completely different from the one they have left when they died. In death, a part of the person may move to the Land of the Dead, or return to the site where spirit children await rebirth, or merge with the great ancestral and creative beings, while another part of him or her may play the role of a spirit trickster. Not only ceremonies but also creator beings have dominated not only indigenous but contemporary Australian scenario to a great extent; the Rainbow Serpent is a major ancestral being for many Aboriginal people across Australia. Baiame or Bunjil are regarded as the primary creator-spirits in South-East Australia and Dingo Dreaming is a significant ancestor in the interior regions of Bandiyan, as Dingo formed the songlines that cross the continent from north to south and east to west, linking up the continent in the fullest sense of the term. The Yowie and Bunyip are some important ancestral beings, besides several  others.

These cultural markers often overlapped and evolved over time. Along with the concept of ‘Dreamtime’ memories, traditional healers (known as Ngangkari in the Western desert areas of Central Australia) which included both men and women were highly respected and regarded as custodians of important dreamtime stories. Reflections, symbols and motifs or perspectives, most of which figure predominantly in the sensibility of even modern day Aborigine writers whether they are writing poems, novels or dramas, link up this continuation and perpetuation of ideas and concepts down the generations. Given the new technologies that run amok in today’s globalized world; writing which is no isolated phenomena helps us to pinpoint these culture traits and belief systems of the Aborigine way of life in a much more conclusive and convincing manner. These and many such other stories of Aborigine dreamtime are both allegorical and pseudo-historical to mention the least. Sometimes wandering Aborigines lost their patches as the land grew arid, and fresh water started disappearing.  And  while  it  was  impossible  to  prove  that  Indigenous  oral  traditions  had continued unbroken over time, its contemporary features give us a clue as to why it may be the world’s most faithful and durable belief system after all.

The Aboriginal Publications Foundation which together with the Aboriginal Arts Board has helped to accelerate and promote Aboriginal concerns in writing has also published numerous books of Aboriginal legends. Representative samples of this genre are Dick Roughsey’s The Great Devil Dingo (1973) and The Rainbow Serpent (1978), Joe Nangan’s (and Hugh Edwards’)Joe Nangan’s Dreaming: Aboriginal Legends of the North-West (1976); the Kormilda Community College’s (Darwin) Djugurba: Tales from the Spirit Time (1980) and Visions of Mowanjum-Aboriginal Writings from the Kimberley (1980) offer examples of Aboriginal sensibility through stories, legends, tales and essays which bring alive the Aboriginal world, long after we have ceased to think that it exists.

References:

• Rose, Deborah Bird. Dingo Makes Us Human: life and Land in an Australian Aboriginal Culture. Cambridge University Press, 1992.
• Ed. Samuels Selina. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Volume 289. Australian Writers, 1950-1975. New York, London, Munich: Thomson Gale., 2004.
• Ed. Samuels Selina. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Volume 260. Australian Writers, 1915-1950. New York, London, Munich: Thomson Gale., 2002.
• Ed. Samuels Selina. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Volume 230. Australian Literature, 1788-1914, New York, London, Munich: The Gale Group, 2001.
• Ed. Wilde H. William., Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews. The Oxford Companion To Australian Literature. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985.