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Overview
Goonur lives with a son of the same name and his two wives, Guddah the red lizard and Beereeun the small prickly lizard. After their husband beats them, the women lure him into a concealed water-filled pit and leave him to drown. His mother tracks him, retrieves his body and places it on an ants’ nest; movement returns and he regains consciousness. She then conceals him in a large carrying vessel when taking him out to hunt. The wives discover this arrangement and pretend that his absence had grieved them.
The son appears to forgive them but secretly prepares a second lethal trap and kills both wives. His mother follows their tracks, finds their bodies, treats their wounds and again uses ants’ nests in the story’s restoration sequence. She brings the revived women home and insists that all three live peacefully and cease deceiving her. They do so for a long time. When the Mother Doctor dies, a dazzling falling star followed by thunder marks her death; the surrounding people interpret this as the sign that a great doctor has died. The account describes a celestial sign accompanying death, not an explicit transformation of Goonur herself into that star.
Origins & earliest records
K. Langloh Parker, Australian Legendary Tales (1896), Goonur, the Woman-Doctor. Narran-region collection; no individual narrator assigned to this chapter.
Records & interpretation
Complete published English narrative, mediated through Parker’s collection and editorial presentation. The stated transformations and celestial or seasonal explanations belong to this specific account.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Australian Legendary Tales: Goonur, the Woman-Doctor
Complete selected chapter. Preface dated 24 June 1895 names regional contributors collectively; hosted transcription is not tied to one guaranteed paper edition.
Family, evolution & connections
The two Goonurs — Parker’s woman-doctor account
Complete Goonur, the Woman-Doctor narrative.
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- Her son Goonur, husband of Guddah and Beereeun
Explicit mother and son, with the son’s two named spouses retained as an annotation. Mother and son share a name but are separate people. Guddah and Beereeun are spouses, not biological children of the doctor; their sisterhood and offspring are unstated. Narrative healing is not medical guidance.
Her son Goonur
The opening explicitly distinguishes the older woman-doctor from her son, also called Goonur. Repeated names do not collapse these two people into one figure.
Guddah and Beereeun, the Gwaibillah Wives
Guddah and Beereeun are explicitly the son Goonur’s two wives, making the older woman their mother-in-law. Their later collective red-star identity is distinct from the falling-star sign accompanying her death.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary historical collected narrativeParker: Goonur, the Woman-DoctorResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.