Stories in Stone: Aboriginal Oral Traditions of Volcanic Impacts in Northeastern Australia

Abstract

Throughout Australia, oral traditions exist that encode memories of catastrophic and impactful events and landscape changes such as floods, meteor impacts and volcanic eruptions. In pre-colonization times, before the year 1788, people who lived in the volcanically active areas of northeastern Australia created many stories that describe some of the effects of volcanism in detail. From an analysis of these stories, focused on the McBride Volcanic Province and the Atherton Tablelands, this paper examines the nature of volcanic activity that occurred here within the past nine thousand years and the impacts it had on Aboriginal society. The implications of such research are demonstrated through a case study of the crater and long lava flow of the Kinrara Volcano, formed about seven thousand years ago, which lies at the heart of Gugu Badhun (Aboriginal) country. Five associated oral traditions are analysed to show insights into early understanding of volcanism and how modern risk management can benefit from these perspectives.