Kurangara in Queensland?: A Critique of Duncan‐Kemp's Account

Abstract

ABSTRACTA particular historical travelling religious complex in northern Western Australia, usually known as Kurangara, has been the subject of anthropological attention since the late 1930s. Overlooked in all the literature is a similar account assigned to 1912–1918, in the distant Channel Country of southwest Queensland. This is in Alice Duncan‐Kemp's last book, published in 1968. My examination shows that a good deal of Duncan‐Kemp's account repeated parts of a 1954 popular magazine about Kurangara in the Pilbara. In other respects Duncan‐Kemp may have drawn on her own childhood experiences, but in the absence of corroboration her account has to be considered unreliable.