‘Jerra Bundoola’ told by Thooritgal in Ulladulla

In the Reading Room at the State Records Centre I viewed some microfiche of original documents. The document posted in this blog is a renowned mythic tale Jerra Bund?la related by Thooritgal, who speaks the Ulladulla language. This handwritten sample is penned by Rev. W. Ridley in 1872.

Thooritgal is from the Wandandian Tribe from down the Shoalhaven River (Besold, Language Recovery of the New South Wales South Coast Aboriginal Languages 2013, p. 111).

In correspondence, Besold wrote that this story was published in the 1870s. Besold has analysed the published version of Thooritgal’s story in Part B of her thesis (Besold, 2013, pp. 117-121). She documents two other versions of Jerra Bund?la; one narrated by Bimmoon, who also belongs to the Ulladulla tribe; and the other is told by Les Bundle of Nowra in 1955 (Besold, 2013, p.111).

This document is relevant to the study of Aboriginal languages because of the age of the sample, and because of the care and detail in which it is written. Since it has been published, re-written and copied it is preserved for future language recovery. The different versions can be compared and contrasted for analysis of the grammar, structure and vocabulary of Ulladulla.

Reference
Besold, J., 2013. Language Recovery of the New South Wales South Coast Aboriginal Languages. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/10133
This note of thanks is written by Rev. W. Ridley, 1872 in correspondence with the Secretary of State, H. Holloran, as an attachment to the Jerra Bund?la document

Reference

Reel 2243, State Records, Kingswood, NSW, Retrieved 2014