Katie Parker

Catherine Eliza Somerville Stow (nee Field, and earlier Parker), is remembered as one of the earliest non-Indigenous Australians to seriously record and value Aboriginal culture and storytelling, particularly the traditions and language of the Yuwaalaraay people of northern New South Wales.

Born on 1 May 1856 at Victor Harbour, South Australia, Katie was the daughter of Henry Field, a pastoralist who later established Marra Station on the Darling River. Her upbringing in remote outback New South Wales gave her an early familiarity with Aboriginal communities. In a tragic event during her childhood, her sisters Jane and Henrietta drowned in the Darling River. Katie was saved by a Yuwaalaraay nurse, a formative moment that would shape her lifelong respect for Aboriginal culture and people.

In 1875, Katie married Langloh Parker, a pastoralist 16 years her senior. By 1879, the couple had relocated to Bangate Station on the Narran River near Angledool, managing more than 200,000 acres of leasehold country. The station is quite close to what would become Lightning Ridge. Over the next two decades, Katie lived at Bangate, observing and engaging deeply with the local Aboriginal community.

Her works, most notably Australian Legendary Tales (1896), More Australian Legendary Tales (1898), and The Euahlayi Tribe (1905), were drawn from her methodical transcription of stories shared with her by Yuwaalaraay elders. She developed a technique of translating and verifying each account through multiple informants and interpreters to ensure the accuracy of her recordings.

Katie’s recollections include an early account of the lightning storm after which Lightning Ridge was named, preserved in her posthumously published memoir My Bush Book, edited by Marcie Muir in 1982.

Her husband, Langloh Parker, later became part of the syndicate led by Joe Beckett of the Weetalibah Hotel that hired Charlie Nettleton to sink a shaft at McDonald’s Six Mile, contributing to the events that would establish the black opal economy at Lightning Ridge.

Following Langloh’s death in 1903, Katie remarried in 1905 to Percival Randolph Stow and lived in Glenelg, South Australia, for the remainder of her life.

Katie Langloh Parker died on 27 March 1940 and was buried at St Jude’s Anglican Cemetery, Brighton.

• K. Langloh Parker @ Wikipedia.

• K. Langloh Parker @ Australian Dictionary of Biography.

• Katie Parker @ Find a Grave.

Article: Research by Russell Gawthorpe and Leisa Carney, edited by Russell Gawthorpe. LRHS research compiled by Len Cram and Barbara Moritz. Sources: My Bush Book, Marcie Muir, 1982, pp. 34, 158; The Lightning Ridge Book, Stuart Lloyd, 1967, pp. 5-6; Lightning Flash Newspaper, 10 May 1979.