Yabba Yabba of Widgeon & Kummera

Sarah Midgley's Yabba Yabba of Widgeon and Kummera is the fictionalised memoir of her childhood years spent at Mill Point (near Noosa, Queensland). She arrived there as an eight year old girl, recently emigrated from England, and quickly befriended two Kabi Kabi girls, Widgeon and Kummera. Midgley's story describes in rich detail the emigrant voyage and experience, life in a timber settlement in the earliest days of European settlement in the Noosa district, and her adventures with her play friends, Widgeon and Kummera. To accompany the story, written in the 1930s, Midgley created dolls in the likeness of her childhood friends and other Kabi Kabi people she knew from the area. Historian Dr Ray Kerkhove was instrumental in discovering the manuscript of Midgley's story (believed to be previously unpublished) in the course of researching the dolls. His essay discusses the significance of the story and the dolls, and contextualises their place in local, Australian, and world history. This is a unique story of early Noosa.