AFTER years of research, Mr Chris Illert of East Corrimal is set to query the legend of The Three Sisters (Katoomba) and provide evidence of the story actually having come from the Shoalhaven.
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Mr Illert's paper, "Three Sisters Dreaming - or did Katoomba get its legend from Kangaroo Valley?" was published as a special supplement to the society's quarterly newsletter, The Shoalhaven Chronograph.
The generally accepted version of The Three Sisters originated in 1931, through a story in the children's section of the Sydney Morning Herald, contributed by 16-year-old Patricia Stone.
She named the sisters Wimalah, Meeni and Gunedoo, extremely tall girls, as members of a tribe of Aboriginals (the Wunullas) living in the bush of the Blue Mountains.
They were continually under attack from a neighbouring tribe, the Coodas.
During one such attack the terrified girls were running from their enemies and to prevent their capture the tribe's wizard Yooma turned them into immense masses of stone.
With minor changes, Patricia Stone's story was reprinted in an Australian Inland Mission magazine, "Our Aim" in 1935 and is believed to have entered Aboriginal folklore in that way.
It has subsequently become part of the sales pitch to the three million tourists who go to the Katoomba district each year.
Over the past decade historian Jim Smith has raised doubts about the Aboriginality of the author and the names that she used in her 1931 piece.
Chris Illert's research has led him to a story from Kangaroo Valley transcribed during the 1870s.
This work was done by Rev. Andrew McKenzie (c1818-78) who lived at Jerrawangala in the Wandandian district.
McKenzie was a missionary and teacher rather than a linguist, but he was closely involved with the local Aborigines.
In 1871 he was appointed Commissioner of Languages, and the NSW Parliament voted him £150 to research the Shoalhaven Aboriginal language.
McKenzie had an able assistant in one of his students, the Shoalhaven Aboriginal woman Lizzy Malone.
Along the lines of The Three Sisters, the legend he related was of the "Mullimula Maidens" who rejected the unwanted advances of a witchdoctor who had spied them catching and roasting fish with yams, on hot stones.
They return downstream, singing and laughing, till he catches up and uses sorcery to turn them (or one of them) into stone.
Their souls subsequently went to Heaven, to become the Pleiades constellation of stars.
