Australian Legendary Tales

Catherine (Katie) Langloh Parker (1 May 1856 - 27 March 1940) was a writer who lived in Northern New South Wales in the late nineteenth century, close to the Eulayhi people. The tales, with their sentient animals and mythic transformations, have a somnambulistic and chaotic narrative that mark them as authentic Dreamtime lore. She is best known for recording the stories of the Aboriginal people around her. As their culture was in decline, because of pressure by European settlers, her testimony is one of the best accounts we have of the beliefs and stories of the Aboriginal people of North-West New South Wales at that time. However, her accounts reflect European prejudices of the time, and so to modern ears her accounts contain a number of misconceptions and insensitive comments.