“well-known Sydney journalist and
authority on the Australian aboriginal
(sic),”(2) he was also the President of the
Australian Archaeological Education and
Research Society and it could be claimed
with some confidence he was Australia’s
top expert on Egyptology. His pedigree is
unchallenged, but what he wrote and
researched led to some findings that would
be considered radical and still vigorously
disputed today.
Slater was not averse to being sensational
and when investigating the Standing
Stones site, surely he knew that in
declaring “the Egyptians learned their
system of hieroglyphs from the ancestors
of the aborigines (Sic),”(3) he was not
going to endear himself to mainstream
academia. Nevertheless, his peers had
elected Slater to represent them and he
“has been a student of the Australian
aboriginal (sic) all his life, and is an
authority on the language. By request, he
has supplied native names for hundreds of
Australian homes.”(4)
Slater’s focus was divided between
establishing the credentials of what he
thought was the First Language ever
spoken or recorded originating in
Australia, and advancing the real history
and incredible reservoir of knowledge the
Original people understood thousands of
years ago.
Murrigiwalda-Sacred Language
According to the correspondent “a few
years ago he acquired a valuable aboriginal
(sic) vocabulary” which “is known as a
Murrigiwalda (sacred language) and gave
him the key to many avenues of
investigation.”(5) He did not actually earn
the privilege to be alerted to such a
seminal interpretation, it was, and this
seems part of a pattern we have observed
whenever sacred issues and artefacts are
involved, given to a woman by the name
of Mrs. David Dunlop. The writer of this
article stated that “the vocabulary had been
the property”(6) of the “wife of the first
magistrate at Wollombi and contained
clues to aboriginal (sic) rock-carvings,”(7)
and as Slater was to find out two years
further on, it was also the key to
deciphering the rock arrangements,
carvings, letters and other symbols found
at the Standing Stones site.
Slater used this ‘Original dictionary’ to
decipher the carvings at Burragurra and
Mt. Yango and what he read certainly
wasn’t printed in any contemporary
account of Original history and Lore. It
made no difference as his work was like a
beacon amongst a climate of intolerance
and racism, and what was an equal
surprise, what he discovered was
acknowledged and about to be published.
It states in the article that “the stone-age
aboriginal (sic) believed that men came
from a protoplasm created by God as a
special species, and that original man
could speak from the moment of his
creation.”(8) We are told that Slater
“offers evidence”(9) to support his
readings that the Original people “had a
deep knowledge of the human circulatory
system, that he believed that the origin of
the planetary system was tidal, that he
understood the creation of the world and
knew much about light, darkness and fire.
Fresh evidence is also given that he
believed in the immortality of the
soul.”(10)
“It is stated, too, that aspects of Mr.
Slater’s research will be of particular