The Legend of the Three Sisters.

The Aboriginal dream-time legend includes the story of the three sisters, 'Meehni', 'Wimlah' and Gunnedoo'.  The sisters, now three magnificent pillars of rock,  lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe.  The sisters were turned to stone to protect them from a great danger.

The Three Sisters

One legend says that a bunyip was going to eat the sisters… now what is a bunyip, you ask? (I ask.)

The bunyip is a legendary evil or punishing spirit or creature from the Aboriginal Dreamtime.

Bunyips haunt rivers, swamps, creeks and billabongs and their main goal in life is to cause nocturnal terror by eating people or animals in their vicinity. They are renowned for their terrifying bellowing cries in the night and have been known to frighten Aborigines to the point where they would not approach any water source where a bunyip might be waiting to devour them.*

There are many reports from white settlers who have witnessed bunyips, similar to the reports in the US of ‘BigFoot’.  Many may still be searching for them.  Again, similar to the BigFoot legend, bunyip descriptions vary. Some Aboriginal tribes say the bunyip looks like a huge snake with a beard and a mane; others say it looks like a huge, furry half-human beast with a long neck and a head like a bird. Additional descriptions indicate this fierce amphibious creature is like a giant seal or even a hippopotamus.

 Some scientists actually believe the bunyip was a real animal, the diprotodon,  which terrified the earliest settlers of Australia but has long been extinct.

Today the bunyip mainly appears in children’s literature and makes an occasional appearance in television commercials.

Bertie the Bunyip (image from Wikipedia)

There is a more romantic version of the legend says that the three beautiful young ladies had fallen in love with three brothers from the Nepean tribe, yet tribal law forbade them to intermarry.

The brothers were not happy to accept this law and so decided to use force to capture the three sisters, causing a major tribal battle.

Whichever legend you like, the end is that a witch doctor from the Katoomba tribe took it upon himself to turn the Three Sisters into stone to protect them from any harm. While he had intended to reverse the spell, the witchdoctor was killed before he could do so. Because only he could undo the spell, the sisters remain in their magnificent rock formation as a reminder of this battle (or the bunyip) for generations to come.

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* Water is scarce in Australia's interior--that's why much of it is called the Red Desert.  Legends like that of the bunyip, who frightens people away from water,  help preserve water.  There were similar legends near Uluru-- people would only risk their lives to get water if their lives were already at risk for the lack of it.