The Flood
Last year, my family and I went on a whale watching trip which was operated by the Quandamooka mob, who are the traditional owners of Moreton Island and the Stradbroke Islands in Moreton Bay. Local lore man, Uncle Josh Walker, told stories of his country; the people, the wildlife, the land and the ocean. I was fascinated to hear him tell of a story of the inundation of Moreton Bay and how the flooding of the bay was verified by scientists who indicated that it happened thousands of years ago as the sea level rose when the last ice age came to an end. The idea that an oral tradition dating back thousands of years could have its roots in an actual event piqued my curiosity. I never would have thought that an oral tradition could preserve a memory for so long. But, there seems to be some evidence that this story really does capture an ancient memory of coastal inundation. At least that's what Patrick Nunn and Nicholas Reid argue in a 2016 paper in Australian Geographer