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Parker, Catherine (Katie) Langloh (1856 - 1940)

Born
1 May 1856
'Luilyl', Encounter Bay, South Australia, Australia
Died
27 March 1940
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Occupation
Author
Alternative Names
  • Field, Catherine Eliza Somerville (maiden name)
  • Stow, Catherine (former name)

Summary

Katie Langloh Parker grew up on her father's property, Marra Station, northern New South Wales. Married at the age of 18, she led an exciting social life in Australian colonial capitals until 1875, when she moved to her husband's property, Bangate Station, near Angledool, New South Wales. There, she started collecting stories and vocabularies from the local branch of Yularoi people, which she subsequently published in several collections between 1896 and 1930. In 1905, she published her only purely ethnographic work The Euahlayi Tribe, an account of her life at Bangate. Her second marriage to Percy Randolph Stow marked the end of her outback life.

Details

It is believed that Parker's appreciation of Aboriginal culture partly had its roots in an event of her childhood, when she was saved from drowning in a river by an Aboriginal girl at the age of six.
Parker's collections of Yularoi stories, Australian Legendary Tales (1896) and More Australian Legendary Tales (1898), were re-published in 1897, 1953, 1955, 1959, 1967 and 1978, respectively. The collections were illustrated by Elizabeth Durack, Nora Heysen and Marion Hart. Parker herself made sketches of Aboriginal children, which were published in 1901. She also wrote Walkabouts of Wur-run-nah (1918) and Woggheeguy: Australian Aboriginal Legends (1930).
Although Parker's work remains problematic in terms of Aboriginal research ethics (old Yularoi people did not welcome her making public the information that was to remain confidential), her collections are an invaluable source of information on Yularoi culture.

Sources used to compile this entry: Parker, K. Langloh (Katie Langloh), My bush book : K. Langloh Parker's 1890s story of outback station life / with background and biography by Marcie Muir, Rigby, Adelaide, 1982, 183 pp.

Related entries

Related Women

Published resources

Books

  • Parker, K. Langloh (Katie Langloh), 1856-1940., My bush book : K. Langloh Parker's 1890s story of outback station life / with background and biography by Marcie Muir, Rigby, Adelaide, 1982, 183 pp. Details

Online Resources

See also

  • Cornstalk, Ann, 'Representative Women', Lone Hand, December, 1912. Details
  • Evans, J., Grimshaw, P. and Standish, A., 'Caring for Country: Yuwalaraay Women and Attachments to Land on an Australian Colonial Frontier', Journal of women's history, vol. 14, no. 4, 2003. Details
  • Kovacic, Leonarda, 'Cataloguing culture : in search of the origins of written records, material culture and oral histories of the Gamaroi, northern New South Wales', PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, Faculty of Arts, 2001, 676 pp. Details
  • Radi, Heather (ed.), 200 Australian Women: A Redress Anthology, Women's Redress Press, Sydney, 1988, 258 pp. Also available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-78644. Details

Leonarda Kovacic

Created: 18 May 2004, Last modified: 4 May 2009

Comments

I have a copy of 1954 reprint of Aus Legendary Tales with intro by H. Drake-Brockman.

On p 171 Gara-dari the platypus, the first sentence reads 'A young duck used to swim away by herse++ in the creek'.
The two plus signs indicate two marks that look to me like stick figures representing quite possibly an adult and a child indiginous person.
My feeling is that this word 'herse' is unlikely to have been written by Catherine Langhloh-Parker or if so, then if an aboriginal word it is not mentioned in the glossary.

Am I making too much of a leap of concern to think that perhaps her original manuscript was interfered with to reflect the normalization of genocide which was being practiced during the colonial era?

I have not yet shown this book to Aboriginal friends due to this concern.
Also on p 152, an illustration of wayamba the turtle with a strange (to me anyway) explanation, 'By this time you should be able to understand this sort of picture. However, don't mistake the thing at the top (bottom) for anything other than a shield.' - Just doesn't make sense to me, and although I am no linguist, again this does not seem something Catherine Parker or any professional or indiginous person would have stated.

I could send scans of these two pages via e-mail if the person reading this does not have a copy of the book readily available.

Thank you for your time and your welcome invitation to comment. Sincerely, Heather Leo.

Heather May Leo - 8 December 2011, 6:37 PM EST

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