The story

Told as it is shared

On the shore of Lake Alexandrina, two Ngarrindjeri men netted more thukerithukeri — Ngarrindjeri: bream — the fish of the lakes — the prized bream — than their canoe could hold. As they worked the fish in, an old man called from the beach and asked, as law required, for a share. The men refused him: not one fish.

Only when he turned away did they see what he was — not an old man at all. By the time they had beached the canoe, thukerithukeri — Ngarrindjeri: bream — the fish of the lakes bones had jammed themselves in the men's throats. They could not swallow; they could not eat. And the bream vanished from the lake, and did not come back. The men, and the people with them, learned what refusal costs when a country keeps the law.

Generosity, the story teaches, is not kindness — it is the keeping of a covenant: the water gives, and those who take must give.

Country & context

The land that holds it

Ngarrindjeri country takes in the Murray mouth, the lakes and the Coorong, where the continent's greatest river ends its run in wind, water and birdlife. The waters made the Ngarrindjeri among the wealthiest peoples of the old south — and their law among the most careful.

Art & memory

Painted, woven, sung

David Unaipon recorded this tale nearly a century ago in his Legendary Tales — the first book published by an Aboriginal author — and the face of the $50 note's author still tells it from every wallet in the country.

Ngarrindjeri weaving — the lake-reed baskets and mats — carries the same law of the waters, and the Coorong's camps remain a classroom for it today.