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Australian Folklore
Australian folklore refers to the folklore and urban legends that have evolved in Australia from Aboriginal Australian myths to colonial and contemporary folklore including people, places and events, that have played part in shaping the culture, image and traditions that are seen in contemporary Old Australia. Australian Aboriginal mythology *Baijini – Unknown race mentioned in Yolngu folklore. * Bora – Sacred Aboriginal initiation ceremony. Many sites still exist throughout Australia. *Bunyip – According to legend, they are said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes. *Dreamtime – The Dreamtime to Aboriginal Australians is the beginning of time, the creation of knowledge from which their culture began more than 60,000 years ago. *Kata Tjuta – Many Dreamtime stories are told by the Pitjantjatjara people, including a mythical creature that lurks the summit. *Lake Mungo remains – Human skeletons found in 1969, believed to have lived between ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Folklore
Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging from traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also includes customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas and weddings, folk dances and initiation rites. Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression. Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain in a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts. Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another either through verbal instruction or demonstr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rainbow Serpent
The Rainbow Serpent or Rainbow Snake is a common deity often seen as the creator God, known by numerous names in different Australian Aboriginal languages by the many different Aboriginal peoples. It is a common motif in the art and religion of many Aboriginal Australian peoples. Much like the archetypal mother goddess, the Rainbow Serpent creates land and diversity for the Aboriginal people, but when disturbed can bring great chaos. There are many names and stories associated with the serpent, all of which communicate the significance and power of this being within Aboriginal mythology, which includes the worldview commonly referred to as The Dreaming. The serpent is viewed as a giver of life through its association with water, but can be a destructive force if angry. The Rainbow Serpent is one of the most common and well-known Aboriginal stories and is of great importance to Aboriginal society. Not all of the myths in this family describe the ancestral being as a snake. O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hook Island
Hook Island is one of the Whitsunday Islands off the coast of the Australian state of Queensland. The island is almost uninhabited, quite rugged and almost completely contained within a section of the Whitsunday Islands National Park. The island has two prominent geographical features on the southern side of Hook Island; the Nara and Macona inlets, two fjord-like recesses that are used as anchorages for the Whitsunday tourist fleet. The island's northern coast is noted for its colourful underwater coral growths, to which snorkelling and diving enthusiasts are attracted. In 1964, photos were taken at the islands which circulated globally after what was believed to be some kind of sea monster was visible. The best known of the Hook Island Sea Monster photos is familiar to many (the two or three others are less familiar). It features a gigantic, tadpole-like monster, supposedly encountered in Stonehaven Bay, Hook Island, Queensland, by Robert Le Serrec and his family and a friend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sea Monster
Sea monsters are beings from folklore believed to dwell in the sea and often imagined to be of immense size. Marine monsters can take many forms, including sea dragons, sea serpents, or tentacled beasts. They can be slimy and scaly and are often pictured threatening ships or spouting jets of water. The definition of a "monster" is subjective; further, some sea monsters may have been based on scientifically accepted creatures, such as whales and types of giant and colossal squid. Sightings and legends Sea monster accounts are found in virtually all cultures that have contact with the sea. For example, Avienius relates of Carthaginian explorer Himilco's voyage "...there monsters of the deep, and beasts swim amid the slow and sluggishly crawling ships." (lines 117–29 of ''Ora Maritima''). Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed to have encountered a lion-like monster with "glaring eyes" on his return voyage after formally claiming St. John's, Newfoundland (1583) for England. Another ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gippsland
Gippsland is a rural region that makes up the southeastern part of Victoria, Australia, mostly comprising the coastal plains to the rainward (southern) side of the Victorian Alps (the southernmost section of the Great Dividing Range). It covers an elongated area of located further east of the Shire of Cardinia (Melbourne's outermost southeastern suburbs) between Dandenong Ranges and Mornington Peninsula, and is bounded to the north by the mountain ranges and plateaus/highlands of the High Country (which separate it from Hume region in Victoria's northeast), to the southwest by the Western Port Bay, to the south and east by the Bass Strait and the Tasman Sea, and to the east and northeast by the Black-Allan Line (the easternmost section of the Victoria/New South Wales state border). The Gippsland region is generally divided by the Strzelecki Ranges and tributaries of the Gippsland Lakes into five statistical sub-regions — namely the West Gippsland, South Gippsland, Latro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cougars
The cougar (''Puma concolor'') is a large cat native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere. It is an adaptable, generalist species, occurring in most American habitat types. This wide range has brought it many common names, including puma, mountain lion, catamount and panther (for the Florida sub-population). It is the second-largest cat in the New World, after the jaguar (''Panthera onca''). Secretive and largely solitary by nature, the cougar is properly considered both nocturnal and crepuscular, although daytime sightings do occur. Despite its size, the cougar is more closely related to smaller felines, including the domestic cat (''Felis catus'') than to any species of the subfamily Pantherinae. The cougar is an ambush predator that pursues a wide variety of prey. Primary food sources are ungulates, particularly deer, but it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WWII
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, mass ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is a state in southeastern Australia. It is the second-smallest state with a land area of , the second most populated state (after New South Wales) with a population of over 6.5 million, and the most densely populated state in Australia (28 per km2). Victoria is bordered by New South Wales to the north and South Australia to the west, and is bounded by the Bass Strait to the south (with the exception of a small land border with Tasmania located along Boundary Islet), the Great Australian Bight portion of the Southern Ocean to the southwest, and the Tasman Sea (a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean) to the southeast. The state encompasses a range of climates and geographical features from its temperate coastal and central regions to the Victorian Alps in the northeast and the semi-arid north-west. The majority of the Victorian population is concentrated in the central-south area surrounding Port Phillip Bay, and in particular within the metropolit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gippsland Phantom Cat
Phantom cats, also known as Alien Big Cats (ABCs), are large felids such as leopards, jaguars and cougars which allegedly appear in regions outside their indigenous range. Sightings, tracks and predation have been reported in a number of countries and states including Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hawaii, Ireland, India, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. Australia Sightings of exotic big cats in Australia began more than 100 years ago. The New South Wales State Government reported in 2003 that "more likely than not" there was a number of exotic big cats living deep in the bushlands near Sydney. Blue Mountains Panther The ''Blue Mountains Panther'' is a phantom cat reported in sightings in the Blue Mountains area, west of Sydney for over a century. Speculation about the Blue Mountains Panther includes the theory that it descended from either circus or zoo escapees, or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Dog Statue Front View
Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondary color (made from magenta and yellow) in the CMYK color model, and is the complementary color of cyan. Reds range from the brilliant yellow-tinged scarlet and vermillion to bluish-red crimson, and vary in shade from the pale red pink to the dark red burgundy. Red pigment made from ochre was one of the first colors used in prehistoric art. The Ancient Egyptians and Mayans colored their faces red in ceremonies; Roman generals had their bodies colored red to celebrate victories. It was also an important color in China, where it was used to color early pottery and later the gates and walls of palaces. In the Renaissance, the brilliant red costumes for the nobility and wealthy were dyed with kermes and cochineal. The 19th century broug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Queensland Tiger
In Australian folklore, the Queensland tiger is a creature said to live in the Queensland area in eastern Australia. Also known by a native name, ''yarri'', it is described as being a dog-sized feline with stripes and a long tail, prominent front teeth and a savage temperament. It has been hypothesized to be a survivor or descendant of the large predatory marsupial ''Thylacoleo'', officially considered to be extinct, or possibly a large feral cat variant (given possible discrepancies with thylacoleo dentition). In 1926 A. S. le Souef described a "Striped marsupial cat" in ''The Wild Animals of Australasia'', this information later also included in ''Furred Animals of Australia'', by Ellis Troughton, longtime curator of mammals in the Australian Museum. History The earliest documented witness reports of a Queensland marsupial tiger date from 1871, with indigenous traditions of the yarri preceding these. Lumholtz writes in 1878I learned that on the summit of the Coast Mou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drop Bear
The drop bear (sometimes dropbear) is a hoax in contemporary Australian folklore featuring a predatory, carnivorous version of the koala. This imaginary animal is commonly spoken about in tall tales designed to scare tourists. While koalas are typically docile herbivores (and are not bears), drop bears are described as unusually large and vicious marsupials that inhabit treetops and attack unsuspecting people (or other prey) that walk beneath them by dropping onto their heads from above. Origin The origin of the drop bear myth is unknown. The earliest written reference found by the National Library of Australia is a passing mention in a classified advertisement in the ''Canberra Times'' in 1982, but the term was in popular usage well before then, especially to scare scouts camping, or city tourists who came to visit the country. Stories and tall tales Stories about drop bears are generally used as an in-joke intended to frighten and confuse outsiders while amusing locals, sim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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