TO fish and chip lovers they’re “rats of the sky”, but humble seagulls are about to be honoured with Cockburn council naming a new beach after them.
The council wants to name the small artificial beach inside Port Coogee marina Djenark Cove, the Nyungar name for the silver gull. The name is to be sent to the WA geographical names committee if a motion before this week’s council meeting is adopted.
Back in the days before overflowing bins and council tips gave them a bum rap, gulls held a privileged position in Nyungar legend, a staff report says.
One Dreamtime story talks of the end of the ice age, when Rottnest and Garden islands were coastal hills slowly being cut off by rising seas.
“The Nyungar believed the spirits of unborn children waited for their mothers in special places such as lakes and outcrops so, as the sea rose these “spirit children” were cut off from any chance of finding a mother and being born into the real world,” the report noted.
Silver gulls maintained the spiritual link between Nyungar country and the spirits trapped by rising waters.
Silver gulls maintained the spiritual link between Nyungar country and the spirits trapped by rising waters.
“When a gull is seen washing its beak in the river’s fresh water it is said to be releasing the spirits it has gathered at sea back into the landscape so that they can at last find a mother and fulfil their destinies as human beings,” the report revealed.
During the 1970s, many Aboriginal people stayed in the area in a place dubbed Seagull Camp.
The report also notes that on Carnac Island, gull chicks and eggs are the main food source for tiger snakes, “nearly all of which are blinded by attacking gulls at an early age but still manage to find and eat their favourite food using their keen senses of smell and heat sensitivity”.
Other names up for consideration are Diana Beach (after an 1878 shipwreck near the South Fremantle power station), Brown Bay after the pioneering Bibra Lake family and Don Miguel Beach after the former Cockburn mayor.
by CARMELO AMALFI