The Goomp Goomp

This resource is related to the following Learning Area –

And responds to the following Enquiry questions –

Q41.	Dreamtime stories and traditional local stories.
Q42.	Why were Dreamtime stories and other stories told, important to the Kombumerri people?

Resource transcript –

One particular story that I was told growing up that really stuck with me as a child was the story of The Goomp Goomp. Now the Goomp Goomp in the Yugambeh language of the Kombumerri people means a certain type of owl. And my mother used to tell me and my siblings growing up “Oh if you don’t do as you’re told, The Goomp Goomp is going to get you”. Now for other Australians this might be .. in the terms of…you could translate this to The Boogeyman. So the boogeyman for us we knew as The Goomp Goomp. Now growing up, I had a I used to … you know, Mum used to say “Oh you if you don’t do as you’re told or if you’re going to misbehave, The Goomp Goomp comes going to get you”. So obviously we’d go to bed, pull the covers up and be like “Okay, Goomp Goomp is going to get us”. So that was a way of Mum warning us if you don’t do as you’re told, the Goomp Goomp was going to get you. Now this story is actually a Dreamtime story that was passed on to my mother by one of her aunties. Now this Dreamtime story in particular is about an owl, which we know is The Goomp Goomp, that used to sit and watch over the men’s corroboree area. And there was this another little out called The Garangarang and a woman came to this owl, The Goomp Goomp and she wanted to spy on the men’s corroboree area and so to punish her, because women weren’t allowed to spy on the men’s corroboree because it was secret men’s business, to punish her he stole her voice. So sometimes when you hear the sound of The Goomp Goomp, which makes a deep sound … I’m not going to make that sound… but it makes a deep sound. In the middle of the night you can hear it. You can also hear in the distance a sound of a woman screaming and that’s the sound of the of the scream that the owl stole from her. The voice that he stole.