Who is Tiddalik?

Dr John Morton has published widely in both general anthropology and Aboriginal studies. He has addressed many conferences, both in Australia and overseas. His research interests in Aboriginal studies include land tenure, religion (myth and ritual), public Aboriginality (including indigenous representation in museums) and indigenous links to Australian environmentalism. He has also prepared many reports for Aboriginal organisations and related public bodies.

If you Google the name "Tiddalik" (or "Tiddalick"), you will find more than a thousand references on the internet. As many people (especially children) know, Tiddalik is a mean frog who got up to some mischief in the "Dreamtime", which means that his story is an Australian Aboriginal one. Actually, the story originally belonged to the Aboriginal people of South Gippsland, in Victoria; but Tiddalik escaped that corner of Australia a long time ago. He can be found not only across the length and breadth of the Australian continent, but also in many other countries around the world. Different versions of the story can be found in books, on websites, as plays, as video or sound recordings, and as poems or songs. There is even a huge public statue of Tiddalik in Warwick, in Queensland, and you can purchase much smaller models of him in the frogs.org.au ARCade where the Amphibian Research Centre has adopted him as a kind of mascot. It is remarkable that a story known to a relatively small handful of Aboriginal people 150 years ago can now reach millions on a global scale. How did that happen?

Back in the late nineteenth century, a number of amateur ethnographers worked with Aboriginal people in south-eastern Australia and recorded quite a bit about Aboriginal culture. Among those anthropologists were the missionary John Bulmer, the pastoralist Edward Curr, and the geologists Alfred Howitt and Robert Brough Smyth, all of whom recorded early versions of the Tiddalik story. Each of the myriad versions of Tiddalik which now abound across the globe can be traced back to these early records, which locate the story in the coastal area of South Gippsland near Port Albert, which lies to the north-east of Wilson's Promontory. Port Albert is about 225 kilometres south-east of Melbourne and boasts a proud maritime history, although many who go there probably fail to realise that, according to the local Aboriginal people, this maritime history would not have been possible had Tiddalik not originally formed the complex pattern of bays, inlets, islands and estuaries which forms the local coast and seascape near Port Albert.

The traditional owners of Port Albert are the people whom Howitt called "Kurnai" - a name which can now be found written and pronounced in various forms (including "Gunai" and "Ganai"). According to Howitt, the Kurnai people more or less occupied the whole of Gippsland, although, as a large "tribe" (or people with a common tongue - the Kurnai language), they were divided into five regional groups. Nowadays, Kurnai people live mainly in the towns of the La Trobe Valley and the Lakes area of Gippsland. The families and clans who originally occupied the area near Port Albert called themselves Brataualung and their region stretched from the coast up towards the La Trobe Valley. It is likely that particular Brataualung families and elders assumed special responsibilities for the story of Tiddalik and the landscape with which the it was associated, although the story would have been known throughout a much larger area. As recently as 1980 a Kurnai elder, Phillip Pepper, recorded a version of the story which he had heard from his grandmother in the early part of the twentieth century (Pepper with De Araugo 1989:34). Some of the versions of the story which were told to Howitt and others in the nineteenth century are somewhat different from, if not dissimilar to, many of the versions we find circulating today. Ironically, the most recently recorded Kurnai version given by Phillip Pepper is the least known amongst the public at large.

Nowadays, Tiddalik is usually told as a tale for children. You can listen to one such version here at frogs.org.au. In this guise, the story tells of a drought caused by the greedy consumption of all the world's water by Tiddalik the frog. Alarmed by the drought, all the other animals resolved to make Tiddalik laugh and so involuntarily release the water kept inside his body. A number of animals (the species change from version to version) performed tricks, but to no avail; Tiddalik steadfastly refused to surrender the water. Then, finally, one animal (again, the species changes across versions) succeeded in making Tiddalik laugh, resulting in a massive flood which slaked the thirst of a parched landscape. And there the story ends, with a palpable sense of relief.

It's easy to see the relevance of this tale. For children, as well as adults, it is a story with a moral lesson about greed and about how it is better to share - and there's no doubt that this lesson is also contained in the original Kurnai stories recorded in the nineteenth century. In this sense, Tiddalik is a universal story and one which travels well across cultures and across the centuries; Tiddalik is a kind of grumpy and mean "everyman", which is why it's so hard to make him laugh. Moreover, the lesson has peculiar relevance in an age of environmental anxiety, especially in regularly drought-stricken Australia and in a wider world in which human consumption of water is outstripping our ability to supply this precious commodity. Perhaps environmental vandalism is primarily a matter of being seen to not share the earth and its resources with other creatures, in which case Tiddalik becomes a model of our hyper-consuming species (Homo sapiens sapiens) which cares not at all for the fate of other creatures and for the future of the planet. Perhaps; although there is some irony in an amphibian being cast in this role, given that amphibians are such sensitive environmental barometers. Amphibians are often the first species to be threatened in changed environmental circumstances; Cane Toads aside, they are not normally the cause of those circumstances.

However, some frogs are more resilient and resourceful than others. There has been some speculation about who Tiddalik really is in terms of scientific classification, with the usual answer that Tiddalik is the Water-holding Frog, otherwise known as Cyclorana platycephala. (Here on the frogs.org.au website, it is also confidently asserted that Tiddalik is indeed that species). It is hardly surprising that people believe this to be the case, given that Cyclorana platycephela has developed the most remarkable survival strategy of absorbing water into its body and sealing it in so that it can endure prolonged drought by deserting the world and burrowing underground. That certainly sounds just like Tiddalik and it is well known that Aboriginal people in some of the more arid regions of Australia collect the Water-holding Frog in times of drought in order to drink its water, which is released as soon as the creature is squeezed.

The problem is that the Water-holding Frog is not found in or anywhere near Tiddalik's original home in Gippsland. Indeed, none of Tiddalik's closest relatives (the Cyclorana genus) is found in Gippsland, so what are we to make of the apparent equivalence between Cyclorana platycephela and the mythical Tiddalik? To be frank, I'm not really sure. It may be that Tiddalik is another species entirely, in which case a clue could be given by the name "Tiddalik", which is in all likelihood onomatopoeic, imitating the creature's call. On the other hand, it is possible that Tiddalik is a mythical memory of an earlier time before Cyclorana platycephela became locally extinct and retreated to what are now the more arid regions of Australia. There is some evidence for this in the way in which Tiddalik is held to be responsible for the flooding of the Port Albert area. About 10,000 or 12,000 years ago, this area was dry land and part of a larger land mass which connected Gippsland and other parts of Victoria to Tasmania - a land mass which disappeared under the Bass Strait as a result of rapid climate change and the consequent melting of portions of the world's ice caps (including some which existed in Australia). It is a reasonable assumption that the Kurnai story of Tiddalik symbolically preserves a memory of this calamitous event, which may have occurred when Cyclorana platycephela was more concretely a part of the local scene.

The version of the story of Tiddalik with which we are broadly familiar today ends with a happy and creative flooding of the landscape, but that is not the way the original Kurnai story ends. In fact, in the original Kurnai versions recorded in the nineteenth century, Tiddalik's release of water into the environment was a natural disaster, causing many to drown and many to become stranded on the islands now situated in the water off Port Albert - Snake Island, Sunday Island, St Margaret Island and a host of smaller islands situated along the coast roughly between Port Albert and Port Welshpool (see map above). Those who were stranded were rescued by Borun the pelican, whose feathers were then entirely black. But Borun's seemingly generous actions led to further conflict when, against her will, he tried to take one of the rescued women as his wife. This conflict eventually led to Borun's death at the hands of another pelican. It also led to the contemporary appearance of pelicans, whose feathers became a mixture black and white as a result of Borun's death. Once upon a time, then, the story of Tiddalik was not quite the happy tale it often appears to be in the classrooms of Australia and the rest of the world. Both Tiddalik and Borun were originally conceived in a world that is very different from that of today. But while Tiddalik has survived and thrived across time, it is not so easy to make contemporary sense of Borun, let alone surround him with a simple and positive spin about caring and sharing.

Yet there could be a lesson for us here. Like the Aboriginal people of Gippsland some thousands of years ago, we too live in a time heralding substantial climate change. The world is getting warmer and we can expect extensive flooding in the not too distant future. Islands and coasts which are now dry land will soon be under water. What will we do? How will we manage? Perhaps some of us will play Borun and help out those who get stranded by the flood. But maybe, also like Borun, some of us will seek to profit from the situation, giving rise to conflict and a need to restore the balance symbolised in the mutual coexistence of the pelican's black and white feathers. The irony is that, while we are already playing greedy Tiddalik by over-consuming water, we are also being held responsible for global warming and the coming flood: Greedy Tiddalik and Tiddalik the Destroyer, all at once.

Maybe, then, we should know what we are in for if we make Tiddalik laugh too heartily. Maybe we should seriously think about getting him to keep his big mouth shut.

References

Curr, E.M. (1887). "The Australian Race: its Origins, Languages, Customs, Place of Landing in Australia and the Routes by which it Spread itself over that Continent" (4 Volumes). J. Ferres, Melbourne.

Howitt, A.W. (1888). "Further notes on Australian class systems". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 18, 30-70.

Howitt, A.W. (1904). "The native tribes of South East Australia". Macmillan, London.

Massola, A. (1965). "The Port Albert frog and the White Rock". Victorian Naturalist 82, 111-113.

Pepper, P. with De Araugo, T. (1989). "You are what you make yourself to be: the story of a Victorian Aboriginal family 1842-1980". Hyland House, Melbourne.

Smyth, R.B. (1878). "The Aborigines of Victoria: with notes relating to the habits of the natives of other parts of Australia and Tasmania" (2 Volumes). John Ferres, Melbourne.

Vanderwal, R. (Ed.) (1994). "Victorian Aborigines: John Bulmer's Recollections 1855-1908" (Compiled by Alastair Campbell). Museum of Victoria, Melbourne.

Tiddalik for sale

In conjunction with Anjian, makers and importers of object of symbolism, the ARC has designed a statue of Tiddalik. You can order Tiddalik in the frogs.org.au ARCade.

• Tiddalik in the ARCade