C.W. Peck’s Australian Legends: Aboriginal Dreaming Stories of Eastern Australia

Abstract

C.W. Peck’s Australian Legends, published in two editions during 1925 and 1933, represent a rare compilation of eastern Australian Aboriginal Dreaming stories. Collected from the area initially settled by Europeans in 1788, and the first to experience widespread loss of its storytelling tradition, they are significant both in regard to the scarcity of similar published texts and the low survival rate of such narratives. Dreaming stories are important elements of Aboriginal culture and Peck’s collection serves to preserve some of that heritage, though in an emasculated, anglicised and decontextualized form.