Early Yowie References2

THE SOUTHERN CROSS
Every year the Liason Committee of Rural Women's Organisation, which is the link between country women's associations all over the world, publishes a book about what the country women of the world are doing. The next
book will include legends and folklore contributed by women of many nations. The South Australian branch of the
Country Women's Association, which is affiliated with the world movement, has sent in for publication the aboriginal legend of the Southern Cross. I wonder how many of you know that charming story?

LONG AGO

     This is the tale as it is retold by Catherine Stow (K. Langloh Parker), of Glenelg, in "Woggheeguy" (Australian Aboriginal Legends).
     In the very beginning (says Mrs. Stow), when Byamee, the Sky King, walked the earth, out of the red ground of the ridges he made two men and a woman. When he saw that they were alive he showed them such plants as they should eat to keep life, then he went on his way.
     For some time they lived on such plants as he had shown them, then came a drought, and plants grew scarce. One day a man killed a kangaroo-rat, and he and the woman ate some of its flesh. The other man would not eat, although he was starving. The woman kept pressing him to eat, but he refused, and at last he became so exasperated that, weak as he was, he walked away from them towards the sunset.
     When they had finished, the man and the woman set out to look for their mate. When they reached the edge of the Coolabah Plain they saw him on the other side of the river. He walked on until he reached a huge yaraan, or white gum tree, and there he fell to the ground. As he lay there dead they saw a huge black figure wth great fiery eyes. The figure raised him to the tree, and dropped him in the hollow centre.

HOW DEATH CAME

     The man and woman who had eaten flesh ran for their lives across the plain. Suddenly they heard such a terrific burst of thunder that they dropped to the ground. Raising them selves, they saw the giant gum tree being lifted from the earth, and passing through the air towards the southern sky. Fiery eyes gleamed from it. Suddenly a raucous shrieking broke the stillness. They saw it came from two yellow-crested white cockatoos that were flying after the vanishing tree, to find their resting-place, and crying after it to stop.
     At last the tree planted itself on the Milky Way, which leads to the place where the Sky Gods live. They could now see nothing but four fiery eyes shining out of it. Two were the eyes of Yowie, the spirit of Death, the other two were the eyes of the first man to die.
     There was wailing all over the bush when it was known that death had come into the world. The swamp oak
has sighed incessantly ever since, the gum tree shed tears of blood, which crystallised as red gum. To this day the tribes of that part speak of the Southern Cross as Yaraandoo—the place of the white gum tree—and the pointers as Mouy, the white cockatoos.
     You may read this and many other interesting stories in "Woggheeguy?"