The Nerang River Love Story

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 –

My name is Madeleine Pugin and my name is Tess Blundell and we are the Kombumerri Traditional Custodians of the Gold Coast region. We have been invited here today to share with you our grandmother’s traditional Dreamtime story which was passed down to her from her grandmother Jenny Graham. Hilma, our grandmother, then passed the story onto her seven grandchildren, Tess myself and my five sisters. Granny was approached by Jenny when she was approaching womanhood herself and she was asked to sit under a tree near the Nerang River and that’s where Jenny shared the story with Hilma. So the story is called the Nerang River love story and it’s about the beautiful blue water lily and the bulrush also known as Muyim and Yimbin and it’s about a young man and a beautiful young woman who were in love and they were soon to be married. They’d often walk along the river hand in hand. In the river lived a spirit and the spirit became really jealous of the young man as he wanted the beautiful young woman to himself. One day as they were walking close to the water’s edge the spirit decided to take the young woman and turn her into a blue water lily calling her Muyim so he could have her to himself. The young man was so sad and he’d look for her every day without any luck and the spirit became sorry and felt bad for the young man. He decided also to take him and turn him into Yimbin the bulrush so he could be close to Muyim and when the breeze blows Yimbin actually reaches out for Muyim so they could be super close together forever. And today on the Gold Coast when you come across creeks and rivers if you see a water lily or a bulrush you now know why they are together.