A labour of love from the Blue Mountains
Aboriginal Legends of the Blue Mountains
By Jim Smith
Drawings by Liz McCalpine
Available for $12 from Jim Smith, 65 Fletcher St, Wentworth Falls 2782
Reviewed by Denis Kevans
Another remarkable book from Blue Mountains author Jim Smith, who is on a Churchill Fellowship studying green corridors in the USA. Aboriginal Legends of the Blue Mountains underscores the uniqueness of this 96 million year old area of Australia.
It is amazing to find in the book a fold-out of the battle between the two great Koori mythological beings, which gave the mountains the shape they have today. This follows Gurangatch and Mirragan right through the Jamison Valley, the Kedumba Valley, from the Wollondilly to the Kanangra Falls. Each topographical feature fits as a stop, pause or nudge in this struggle. Unbelievable!
And yet all the primary sources of Dharug and Gundungurra mythology and dreaming stories died over 150 years ago. One primary source, the hunter, Norou-Gal-Derrie, drawn by French artist N. Petit in 1802, glances from the front cover of the book. Jim Smith, with his usual persistence and determination, and his deep love of the Blue Mountains, has pieced together this story till it rings with truth.
His best oral source is Ben Esgate, a descendant of Cox River pioneers, whose love of the mountains and Koori dreaming stories flares in a bright illumination of past time. Ben took Jim to the Mouin waterhole, red collared with volcanic blood lava, one of the underworld exits of the writhing, serpentine form of Gurangatch.
Where are the Dharug? Where are the Gundungurra, who fished these waters with the juice of hickory bark, which stunned the fish till they floated into careful hands, from time immemorial? Not only have the perfectly balanced hunters vanished, but the fish they feasted on survive in only two species. Gone are the bass, the sprat (freshwater herring), the mullet and the trout-cod.
Aboriginal Legends of the Blue Mountains is published by Jim Smith as real estate signs line the highway and sprout along gullies and creeks that carry water to keep the Blue Mountains blooming, as a garden of Eden, lost or found, from when time begun.