Around 14,000 years ago –<\/p>\n
Rising seas disconnect mainland from New Guinea, Lardil People pass down story about a \u2018seagull woman\u2019 cutting out islands .<\/p>\n
A great gulf is formed on the north of the continent, after a huge lake on the land bridge to New Guinea is covered by the rising\u00a0seas.<\/p>\n
This will become known as the Gulf of\u00a0Carpentaria.<\/p>\n
Thuwathu-Bujimulla (Wellesley Islands) is formed when a \u2018seagull woman\u2019 named Garnguur discovers her husband Crane was\u00a0unfaithful.<\/p>\n
At first, he was a good husband, but then he went\u00a0wrong.<\/p>\n
Crane was\u00a0adulterous.<\/p>\n
He went out hunting, but he was actually seeing another\u00a0woman.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, he didn\u2019t bring back food for her and the baby and the seagull got tired of\u00a0this.<\/p>\n
She says, \u201cMy husband never helps me. I struggle with my baby and my\u00a0raft.\u201d<\/p>\n
So she cut out the islands by putting her baby on a raft and pulling her raft backwards and forwards to make the sea\u00a0rise.<\/p>\n
She got her own bushfood from the islands that she\u2019d made from cutting up the mainland\u00a0area.<\/p>\n
When Crane came back, he could not find them. He was\u00a0stranded.<\/p>\n
She punished her husband for not helping and put a curse on the old\u00a0crane.<\/p>\n
His punishment is that he can\u2019t fly properly\u00a0now.<\/p>\n
Crane stays around the shallow water now, you won\u2019t catch him in the deeper\u00a0waters.<\/p>\n
Seagull, she can fly, swim and hunt in\u00a0saltwater.<\/p>\n
Tullberra Island\/Reef (white man name) is where she finished up and she still rests\u00a0there.<\/p>\n
She can be seen at low\u00a0tide.<\/p>\n
It will become a big ceremony ground and initiation place where only men can\u00a0go.<\/p>\n
The story teaches women to be strong, look after themselves and their children and reminds young people of their family\u00a0responsibility.<\/p>\n
This story is the intellectual cultural property of the Knowledge Holder(s) above. Read
\n our ICIP Protocol<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Around 14,000 years ago – Rising seas disconnect mainland from New Guinea, Lardil People pass down story about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-225268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}