Coreeda (Australia)

Coreeda is a modern interpretation of what can be the oldest sport in the world. The Aboriginal fight was recorded 30,000 years ago on the walls of the cave at Mount Grenfell Historic Site, near Cobar.

Coreeda is not only a sport but also a spiritual message. Australia's heritage dates back to ancient times and is often said to have the oldest living culture on our planet. This is just as true for the native martial arts as in the case of songs and forms of dance, or even the stories and generally the folklore of this Continent. Coreeda is a traditional Australian martial art. It combines Aboriginal dance with a unique wrestling fight. Training includes combat without and with the use of weapons.

The document Dreaming (WEH Stanner, "The Dreaming" in TAG Hungerford (ed.), Australian Signpost, 1956, W.E.H Stanner, The Australian Aboriginal Dreaming as an Ideological System, 1963) contained a legend about the creation of Coreeda, in Ngiyampaa Nation of Western New South Wales. The Lizard man, called Beereun, was told by a huge snake (troubled by the cruelty of people) that he would watch the Red Kangaroos, thanks to which he would be able to learn how to fight without a weapon. He then transferred these fighting techniques to his clan and began the tradition of wrestling tournaments as an important ceremony for maintaining peace between tribes. As a result, the Ngiyampaa people lived in peace and prosperity (Dickson, Gavin, "From the Dreaming to the Dreamers" Sid Hart Publishers, 2010, p. 79). Based on the remains of rock art in places such as Mt Grenfell near Cobar in Western NSW (New South Wales), it is estimated that the first Coreeda tournament took place over 10,000 years ago, making Coreeda one of the oldest documented Folk Wrestling styles in the world.

Aborigines have been practicing wrestling from the beginning of their existence on the Australian Continent, which, according to current scientific estimates, took place over 70,000 years ago. This is confirmed by various presentations in art that appear throughout the country, some of them even more than 10,000 years old, usually have an abstract form and are mostly interpreted by contemporary scholars as dance performances. At Mt Grenfell, about 40 km from Cobar in the Western NSW state, there are beautiful presentations of ritual ceremonies made with ochre on the rock walls by the ancestors of Ngiyaampa over 30,000 years ago, and many characters look as if they were in the posture at the beginning of the fight.

One of the earliest European testimonies of Australian wrestling comes from 1802, when Baudin's French expedition stationed in Tasmania. An old sailor named Jean Maurouard challenged the Palawan man to the wrestling match, which he won. Another French expedition, under the command of Louis Freycinet, witnessed some fighting near the Port of Sydney in 1819. There are no English reports of tribal Aboriginal battles, because the British penal colony was in a state of war against the local people of Daruk, and they were not invited to the ceremonies during which wrestling fights took place.

In the old days, wrestling served various purposes:

1. As a way to train young warriors in unarmed combat in order to prepare for tribal fights.
2. As a form of public entertainment.
3. As a ritual, show and competition conducted in a peaceful way during large tribal meetings.

As with many martial arts, young men and women were able to fight aggression and anger constructively. Then such rivalry served to maintain peace between tribes without bloodshed and death.

In Australia's various cultural areas were different rules for wrestling, and some of the names of sports come from colonial times:

- Tur-der-er-rin – Kulin people from South Victoria,

- Partembelin – Nyeri Nyeri people from North Victoria,

- Ami – the Jinibara people from the South East part of Queensland,

- Goombooboodoo – Eualayi people from West New South Wales,

- Arungga – folk Kokomini from Cape York.

Wrestling has also become an element of ethnographic research. David Unaipon in his study of local culture at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, presented the female wrestler Ngarrindjeri, and ethnographer Walter Roth at the same time posted a similar relation while examining the community of Cape York. Catherine Somerville, who wrote under the pseudonym K. Langloh Parker, described the functions of wrestling as part of the rituals of the residents of Western New South Wales in 1905, and in 1957 anthropologist Lindsay Winterbotham published the story of an 80-year-old man from Cherbourg Mission, also known as Gaiarbau, who mentioned that in his childhood days wrestling was part of the harvest festival of bunya cones.

Currently, since 1998 modern Coreeda is being taught by the Coreeda Association. The story began in the city of Cobar in West New South Wales when Bill Griffiths told the story he heard from his grandfather. It was a message that the ancestors brought peace to their people by imitating the Big Red kangaroos in battle. The warriors fought following specific rules of the game. Actually, according to this today's form of this sport has been created. After hearing this story, the founders of the Coreeda association began to work with Koori's children in West Sydney, adding the method of training freestyle wrestling and judo to the Aboriginal dance, conducted by Peter Williams. Peter was from the same cultural region of Ngiyaampa as Bill Griffiths and he taught traditional dance for several years, but he did not realize the origin of this sport. Since then, the word Coreeda has been associated with it (in the Ngiyaampa language means kangaroo hunting), and the sport has become popular, combining music and competition, especially among children and adolescents.

While UNESCO recognized this sport as part of the intangible cultural heritage of Australia, it did not receive official recognition or permanent funding in Australia.