Paper Yabber: The Messenger and the Message

Abstract

One of the tasks often given to Aboriginal people on the Australian frontier was that of messenger, and the messages they carried, usually letters, came to be known by the Pidgin English phrase 'paper yabber' or, less commonly, 'paper talk'. The first part of the paper will examine characteristic features of the Aboriginal role as messenger, or 'mailman'. The second part is a study of the Australian folklore that sprang up around the practice, in particular the seemingly ubiquitous story of paper yabber and the 'tobacco thief'. In tracing the history of this story, and its variants, one not only gets an insight into the function of popular stereotypes, but also the mechanisms by which they are transmitted.