Nyoongar

This story begins here, in the south west of Western Australia. It begins at a time when the Earth was flat and featureless. There was nothing on it at all. There was almost total darkness.

There was this huge spirit serpent, it had been lying there half-asleep and at the same time very much aware of what was going on. The serpent said, “when I become real I’ll have no hands and no feet, how can I possibly look after anything.” Then as all the other spirits watched, this great serpent materialised in front of them. The heavy sky was crushing the great serpent onto the ground, and as they watched they saw the great serpent use all its muscles together and with all its strength, and energy it lifted the sky, and in total defiance move across the land creating a smooth trail beckoning all the others to follow.

This serpent is known as Wogarl. Yes, Wogarl was the first to become real, the first to perform heroic deeds by creating the trails and the hills it was the first leader. At times this great serpent went under the ground and came up again forming the area where there would be lakes (Noel Nannup 2014).

It is through the lake system. There is a water serpent down there below which is extremely important and the water on the surface is really the marks where the waugle wound his way through and came up after making the streams and the water ways. It’s all part of the ecological system to purify the land and the family. Once it was surrounded by waterways and if they fill them up with rubbish then the land begins to die (Cedric Jacobs cited in Laurie 2003). 

During the Nyoongar seasons of Kambarang (spring) and Birak (summer), Noongar people camped at the wetlands as part of their seasonal migration to and from the coast.

The wetlands were places of abundance to Nyoongars who lived off the water birds, frogs, gilgies (freshwater crayfish), turtles and plant foods so prevalent in the swamps (Hallam 1975).

In the 1830s when the explorer George Grey came across wetlands north of Perth he describes seeing:

Swamps producing yun-jid, a species of typha, served by well established paths and supporting abundant populations in clusters of well built, clay plastered and turf roofed huts…these superior huts, well marked roads, deeply sunk wells and extensive warran grounds all spoke of a large and comparatively speaking settled resident population (Grey 1841).

In 1850, The Perth Gazette reported  a gathering of some 300 Aboriginal people at Lake Henderson on the edge of the town:

On Friday evening a grand corroboree was held at Anderson’s Lake [sic], at the back of the town, by upwards of 300 natives, belonging to the tribes inhabiting the country for a circuit of 200 miles from Perth

“Corroboree”, Inquirer, 23 January 1850

As Nyoongars were marginalised and moved out of their country by the colonists, lakes and swamps became important campsites, where many families lived on the fringes of white settlement, supplementing their diet with wild foods so abundant in the swamps. A swamp known to the colonists as “Third Swamp” was a deep wetland surrounded by dense ti-tree thickets and was apparently a favourite Nyoongar hunting ground. This swamp became a duck shooting area for the colonists and was reserved in 1873 as a public park. Renamed “Hyde Park”, it underwent an extreme makeover into walled lakes with lawns and European trees that provided little habitat for birds and reptiles.