Title: Australian Legends
Author: C. W. Peck
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0607141.txt
Language: English
Date first posted: September 2006
Date most recently updated: September 2006

This eBook was produced by: Richard Scott

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html


To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au


AUSTRALIAN LEGENDS:
TALES
HANDED DOWN
FROM THE REMOTEST
TIMES BY THE AUTOCTHONOUS
INHABITANTS OF OUR LAND

C. W. PECK


Crimson bloom a verdant shrub.
  Set in every bower;
On clouded heights in coastal scrub.
  Hail! Greetings to this flower!
Crags and glebes it aye enhances.
All Australia it entrances.
  Radiant in its Power.


CONTENTS

Prelude: "A Princess"
A Royal Visit
The First Waratah
The First Gymea or Gigantic Lily
Why the Turtle has no Tail
The Flood
How the Waratah got its Honey
Why the Sun Sets
What the Moon is
How the White Waratah became Red
How the Sky was Lifted Up
The First Kangaroo
The Second Kangaroo
The Struggle for Supremacy between Birds and Animals
The Dianella Berry
How the Pistils of the Waratah became Firm
What Makes the Waves
The First Bush Fire
Why Leaves Fall
At Low Tide
The Bubbling Spring
The Salt Lakes
Shooting Stars
Why the Petiole of the Waratah is Long
Why the Waratah is Firm
The First Crayfish
The Clinging Koala
The Smilax
Star Legend
Bird Legend
Two Waratah Legends
Another Legend
Mist and a Fringed Flower
Mulgani
The Legend of the Pleiades
The Black Satin




PRELUDE. A PRINCESS

In a little settlement for aborigines not far from Sydney lives the
last full-blooded person of the once-powerful Cammary Tribe. She lives
in the past. The present has no lure for her, and very little
interest.

She has to eat and she has to sleep and she has to dress.

She looks for no pleasure, but she finds pleasure in the thoughts she
has of her earliest childhood, and the knowledge she has of the real
South Coast aborigine.

She is a princess, and she is also the sister-in-law of the man who
was the last king of his group.

Both groups were of the one tribe, and each group had its king.

She has the true aboriginal cast of countenance, and she speaks most
fluently to those who can understand or only partly understand the
language of her people.

And her people are of two groups, for she said to the writer, "My
mother was of the North; my father was of the South; I speak between
the two!"

And her English is of a pleasing kind, for it is not in any sense
"pidgin." It is soft in accent and musical in tone.

She does not know her age, for, as she puts it, "I did not go to
school."

She knew many beautiful legends.

But they have nearly all gone from her, for she never told them. She
heard them and forgets nearly all. She hears no more, for they are
seldom spoken of by the remnant of her race.

Time was when the story-teller was an honoured man, when he dressed
for his part, when the young people were educated in the lore of the
land and the law of the land, by means of legend.

But there is so much white blood in the people that practically none
wish to bear the stories of the "Alcheringa," and so the stories have
faded.

But not all.

And the religious beliefs!

They are still very real to this "Last of Her Tribe."

Just as real as ours are to us.

"Don't think that the white man told us about God," said Ellen.

"My people always knew about Him. Their fathers told them. Our God was
never a wooden idol, nor a thing carved by human hands. He was always
up in the Heavens where He lived, and from where He looked down upon
all the world, and sought out the evil doers and punished them in many
ways. From His throne He caused by His will the food to come upon the
trees and the game to add to the larder. And He made the rain to fall,
and He shook the earth with His thunder, and He threatened with the
lightning! And there were good men who could see Him and get Him to
move!"

So said Ellen.

To pray to Him was the most natural thing for the people to do, and
there were those whose principal mission it was to do that. They were
the good men-the Clergymen, the Priests.

He made it the duty, too, of the people to inflict punishment upon the
wrong doers that were caught and proved to be malefactors. Therefore
it was, that men were sometimes stood up and speared, and women were
beaten with nullahs.

There were the doctors, also. These men gave much time to the study
and practice of the healing art, and sorcery and witchery did not
escape their especial notice-just as the white people have their
crystal readers and fortune-tellers to-day right in all our capital
cities.

The doctors knew much of the effect of the eating of herbs and the
drinking of water in which herbs had been steeped. They provided the
leaves and the bark that were thrown into the water-holes in order to
stupefy fish, as well as the medicines for the cure of the ills of the
people. In their sorcery they played upon the emotions just as our
mesmerists and evangelists do.

All this the old Princess of the aboriginal settlement tells, but not
to everyone. Only to those who have a sympathy and an understanding,
and a readable wish to learn the deeper things of the aboriginal mind.

There is, in a gully near Appin, a place that was sacred for,
possibly, many thousands of years.

The gully is deep, and the head of it is a big round water-hole with
precipitous sides, ever one of which the water pours in a roaring,
tumbling, spraying fall.

The fall is governed now by the gates and spillways of the Cataract
Dam, but until that was built it was governed only by the rains that
fell and the winds that blew.

And the way down to the pool was always difficult.

None but the priest ever descended there, and when he did he carried
with him the flint rod that served as the bell in the church steeple
of the white man does-to call-but with the difference that the bell
calls the people, and the flint called the gods or the spirits.

Tap, tap, tap, tap went the flint on the sandstone, and ages of
tapping wore a hole that is not even seen by the great majority that
clamber there now, much less understood.

My Black Princess heard of that Sacred Place when she was a tiny
child.

She has never been to Appin, but her father and other great men of her
group have been there and they told of the Sacred Spot when they
returned to the coast.

It was a church, and nothing else, yet built, not with hands, but by
the will of the God that the aborigines knew.

Our name for the Princess is Ellen, and Ellen's eyes glowed when she
told the writer of her God.

And how they glowed when the writer told Ellen of the Sacred Spot near
Appin, and when he showed that he knew the meaning of the worn hole
and the ages of tapping!

"The place is 'kulkul,'" said Ellen, "and 'kurringaline,' and yet it
is not 'pourangiling.' No 'kurru' are there!"



A ROYAL VISIT

My office was very small, and very stuffy, though under the floor
covering whenever I lifted it up, it was damp and mildewed.

The day was hot and steamy, and before me on the desk was a loose-leaf
ledger that simply bristled and screamed with figures.

The headings were such as this: "30 x 5.77 Covers, 710 x 90 Covers, 30
x 31 B.E. Covers, many-figured Tubes," etc., etc., and the columns
were serial numbers of tyres containing as many as nine figures.

One figure denoted the year in which the tyres were manufactured,
another the month, and intervening figures accounted for wealth of
fabric or cord, and other details of tyre-building.

For we were distributors of motor-tyres.

The little half-door between me and the shop gave me a view of the
counter; and the shelves, packed with little red bags, were heavy with
their goods.

In the little red bags were the inner tubes.

Men came in and went out.

Some took price-lists. Some asked questions only, and then retired.

Some made a purchase and haggled about the discount, and some wanted
to see the Chief.

My eyes ached and my head was not altogether free from a feeling like
neuralgia.

The mildew, the heat, the figures-all were contributing factors.

Then I heard a voice that made me drop my pen and peer out towards
that end of the counter near the door, and just out of my view as I
remained seated and at ease.

As near to the outside door as she could stand while yet within the
shop-that is the position taken up by the owner of the voice.

And such a voice! Smooth and soft and cushioned!

As velvet is soft to the touch, so this voice is soft to the ear.
Perhaps not everyone's ear, but certainly to mine.

My twisting office-chair creaked as I stood up. Stood up to attention
as rigidly-hatless and coatless as I was-just as I sprang to it with a
click when the General addressed me away over in Palestine.

"Nungurra ilukka," I said.

The owner of the voice-a lady-shy, timid, reserved, refined-turned to
me.

"That is the language of my people," she said.

"Come here, please, and speak to me," I said.

Now I have heard some people snigger at the walk of those to whom this
lady belonged.

It is certainly as different from that of most Sydney people, or any
other white people, as the step of a peacock is from the tramp of a
camel. It has the qualities of the peacock.

It is soft. It is noiseless. It is dainty.

It takes up its full share of the floor. Every toe finds its level,
and the heel is planted as firmly as the supports of the Sydney
Harbour Bridge.

As I said before, it is noiseless.

When I had found the lady a seat, and had resumed mine, I asked, "In
what part of your country were you born?"

She answered evasively.

It is as natural for her and her people to be evasive as it is for the
most shrewd of us to refrain from telling the whole truth when we want
to sell a secondhand car or a groggy horse.

"My father," she said, "came from the South and my mother from the
North. His language was not the same as my mother's. I speak between
the two. My words are both his and hers. Yours are neither. You speak
like the people of far, far away. I do not understand you. But I know
your words are of my country."

Then she leaned forward and put a hand as soft as her footfall and as
soft as her voice, on my shoulder.

She peered into my face and searched me as if she expected to see
something she would be afraid of.

But she was not afraid.

"Excuse me putting my hand on your shoulder," she said. "Perhaps I
have no right to do it. But I know now you do not mind, and you will
understand."

Then her lips quivered and her eyes filled.

She leaned forward.

"You know my people?"

She questioned me.

Yet it was not really a question. It was a statement of fact.

"Yes," I said, "I know your people!"

Then she overflowed.

"And aren't they GOOD people?"

It was an unburdening! It was a cry!

"Yes," I said. "They ARE good people!"

Then she removed her hat.

Her hair is white and old.

"My father was a King. I am a Princess. My blood is royal!"

"And where was your father a King?"

"He was a King of his people, and they lived around Wollongong. I am a
native of the Wollongong district-born at Unanderra!"

"Was your father ever crowned?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, "when I was a grown girl-a young woman-he was crowned
by the white people at a Wollongong Show. They gave him the title of
'King Mickey!'"

Then I saw a picture of my tiny boyhood.

In the Show ring, just after the high-jumping contest was decided, a
black man was taken by the hand by a Wollongong dignitary and led to a
small dais.

Some ceremony was enacted, but I was too small and too young to
understand.

I saw that black man invested with something, and the people cheered
and the black man shouted and waved his hands, and he had a string
round his neck, and a brass crescent hung over his broad hairy chest.

"I saw your father crowned," I said, "and since then I have seen many
of your people. They are GOOD people."

I bowed my royal visitor out.

She carried an inscribed copy of a little book about her folk.

"My grandchildren will read it to me," she said, "and I will come back
one day, and I will tell you some more of our stories-stories we do
not tell excepting to our own people. But I will tell them to you!"

"This," I said, "is a Royal visit."

She paused.

"Your people came here and took our country," she said very quietly,
"but just a few of you understand us. I go now to Wollongong." My
Royal visitor has been back to my office.



THE FIRST WARATAH

Why did the early arrivals in Australia imagine that the aborigines
had no folk-lore, no legends, hardly any manners, habits and customs?
Is it that they really had none, or that the blacks were merely
incomprehensible? I think it was the latter.

Australia had much of country to be explored difficult country-on the
Coast cool and equable of climate, on the highlands rough, jagged, and
cold, on the Great Plains desert, with all the heat and madness of a
great gravelled and sandy waste and the tales that may be told, known
and unknown, are tales of endurance and adventure, rivalling truth and
fiction of the sixteenth century.

One of the prettiest is the true story of Barrallier and its sequel.
Barrallier carved his name on a gum-tree in one of the roughest of the
foothills of the Great Dividing Range in 1802.

He was an officer in the Navy. He was fired with a desire to explore.
But he was thwarted by his officers-the Commander refused him leave.
Then did the Governor show that resource that is now supposed to be
possessed solely by the Australian Digger.

The Digger, being British, but inherited it; and if the Tommy
generally is without it, it is because Tommy generally is not Tommy
specially.

Governor King learned of Barrellier's great desire, and as Governor
King could make appointments irrespective of the naval commander, he
gave Lieutenant Barrallier, R.N., the post of aide to himself. And
then Governor Philip Gidley King, also R.N., sent his aide on an
embassy to a mythical King of the Burragorang Tribe, away in those
rocky fastnesses in the foothills of Australia's Great Dividing Range.
Barrallier got down into that now far-famed Valley, and we, who do it
in cars on a road blasted out of the side of a sheer precipice two
thousand feet deep, wonder how!

There really was a king down there, and his name was Camoola. He was
polite and eager to assist, if withal curious. He led Barrallier over
a trackless defile, and showed the way up the rock walls by the track
of the bush rat or the dingo.

But he developed a will to elbow Barrallier down into the ravine
again.

No protestations availed to cause Camoola to continue in the direction
Barrallier's compass pointed as the way to the interior. The white man
grew angry; Camoola grew sullen. Camoola tried to tell something, even
brandishing a spear, and Barrallier thought that demonstration a
menace. Barrallier showed his teeth, and that night he was deserted.
Sunrise showed that Camoola and his dusky satellites had vanished. The
pointing of the spear was to illustrate that should the journey be
continued another tribe's country would be trespassed upon, and war
would be the result.

And Barrallier was in the thick gullied bush, surrounded by great
forbidding walls of rock, and there grew the lovely Prostanthera[1]
with it, purple baby-toothed flowers, the wild Clematis, the beautiful
Araucaria, the laurel-like Rapanea[2] variabilis, the Alsophila
excelsa, the myrtles, and that glorious plant and flower that to-day
is the pride of every Australian who sees it and knows its history,
and knows the fact that of all the world only Australia and Tasmania
have it-have its whole genus-the WARATAH!

Its genus name was given to it by the great botanist Brown, and that
was after it had been wrongly described as an Embothrium.

In 1818 Brown named the genus-which comprises three varieties-Telopea,
because it is seen from afar; Queensland's waratah is Telopewa
speciosissima; that variety also grows in South Wales, as also does
Victoria's, which is called Telopea oredes, and the little beauty, the
joy of the artist, is Tasmania's Telopea truncata.

But this little bit of botany is a digression.

Barrallier got out, and after reporting adversely of his black guides,
he was returned to the navy, and his end came to him back in his
native England, after being entrusted by the British Government with
the task of erecting Cleopatra's Needle on the Thames Embankment.

Though he did not know it, we revere the name of Barrallier, and we
glory in the deeds that were his. At the top of a rocky pass is his
name cut in a giant gum-tree, and the date "1802."

[1. Prostanthera, the white variety of Tasmania is known as snow-
flower.

2. Rapanea variabilis, a laurel,--Alsophila, a tree tern; Araucaria
cunninghami, a pine tree; Embothrium, a family of red ftwering plants
in South America.]

Now for the sequel.

Many months afterwards a fine specimen of the Burragorang tribe found
his way to a settler's house not far from Parramatta. He was none
other than Camoola. And strange as it may seem, Camoola had had
tidings brought him of Barrallier's adverse report. Two Hunter River
blacks who were with Barrallier had returned to the Burragorang Valley
with the story, and they taught to Camoola a little of the white man's
tongue. He bore as a peace offering the national flower of his race-
the only flower that the black man ever plucked to show a white man-
the waratah.

And Camoola told its story.

Long years ago there lived a beautiful aboriginal maiden named Krubi.
She had made for herself a cloak of the red skin of the rock wallaby,
and she had ornamented it with the redder crests of the gang-gang
cockatoo. It was said down in the Burragorang Valley to be the only
cloak of its kind in the world. And Krubi knew of a man who was far
enough removed in blood to be encouraged in his love for her. Her man
had not yet been taught all that the corroboree was inaugurated to
teach, but that did not prevent her from choosing a cleft between two
great weathering sandstone rocks on the top of a ridge to watch for
her man's return from the chase. The red figure was the first object
to strike the eyes of the returning tribe of hunters. The red cloak
was the only object looked for by the young man. But one night Krubi's
heart was saddened. She learned that there was to be a great
corroboree, and her man was to be taught what--to do in war. Blacks
from another tribe had been seen on Burragorang preserves.

They were to be punished.

Krubi of the red cloak stood on the sandstone cleft and watched for
the return of the warriors. She heard the yells of battle. She saw
here and there a flying figure, and sometimes she saw the swaying
crowds down on the clear patches between the forest giants and tangled
scrubs. Then in the afternoon she saw her scattered tribe of fighting
men returning, and no young, lithe figure stepped out from the others
and peered up as of yore.

Krubi stayed for seven days waiting, and her tears formed a little
rivulet, and already the Leptospermum and the Boronia serrulata, and
Epacris longifolia had begun to sprout. Krubi did not know their
names, neither did Camoola, but Camoola showed the flowers-the
Buttonflower, the Native Rose, and the Native Fuchsiaand afterwards
the botanists made the names.

Then Krubi went to the camp.

The ashes were cold and seven days old.

So Krubi returned to the sandstone ridge, and, with that power that
the black man exercises, and that all mankind possesses, she willed
herself to die. She passed into the little tract of weathered
sandstone, and up came the most beautiful of Australian flora. The
stalk is firm and straight, and without a blemish, just like the man
Krubi died for. The leaves are serrated and have points just like his
spear. And the flower is red, redder and more glowing than any other
in Australia. The black man called it "waratah" because it is most
beautiful. He loved it because he knew its history.

And Sir James Smith, the President of the Royal Society in London,
wrote of it in his book published in 1793 in these words: "The most
magnificent flower that the prolific soil of New Holland affords is,
by common consent, both of Europeans and natives, the WARATAH!"

No one but an Australian can say, "My Waratah," for no other country
has it.

Mr. Richard T. Baker, F.L.S., of Sydney, has produced a book called
"The Australian Flora in Applied Art" 1915. Get it and see for
yourself what a wonder this flower is!



THE FIRST GYMEA OR GIGANTIC LILY

One of the most wonderful of Australian flowers is the New South Wales
variety of Gymea or Gigantic Lily (Doryanthes excelsa). This huge red
bloom of ours is, as its variety name implies, the most gorgeous of
the Doryanthes genus in this country.

The legend the natives have about it is as follows:-

One still, hot day in a summer of ages and ages ago, a tribe of
aborigines found sustenance in a river-bed that lay at the bottom of a
wooded ravine. The whole season had been droughty, and the water was
hardly running at all. Yet there were holes, and great wide holes too,
wherein the water was so deep that no one knew of any tree that would
reach down to the bottom. Stones thrown in fell with a heavy, full-
sounding splash and were sucked down and down. In those murky depths
were huge eels and giant fish, and occasionally one or other came to
the surface and fell a victim to the spears of the black men. The
great towering, rock-girt side of the river gave many hours' shelter
from the burning, blazing sun. That side with the easterly aspect was
clothed with many myrtles and much Macrozamia[1] and Chorizema[2] and
bracken fern. Quite a number of the dainty, feathery Christmas Bushes
(Ceratopetalum gummiferum) shone gorgeous and red amid the myrtaceae,
and rearing high above all the undergrowth were the giant eucalypti-
the Eucalyptus Smithii with its long, narrow leaf, E. Saligna or
Sydney Blue Gum, the Eucalyptus australiana or peppermint, and others-
while wild clematis and Wonga wonga[1] vine climbed from shrub to
shrub.

[1. Macrozamia-burrawang. 2. Chorizema-a yellow-flowered shrub.]

That day the heat was intense.

Nothing of the vegetation stirred, excepting during the silent
wandering of a truant zephyr that came floating up the river-gully
like the long, balanced, weightless gossamer that sways when the web
is broken in the early morning.

The tribe lay about under the clematis and creeper and amongst the
ferns. Only the hardiest of the hunting men stood, silent and
perspiring, with poised spear, waiting for a fish to sail up to the
top. Now and then a little chewed burley from the seed of the
burrawang was softly dropped to the water.

Otherwise all was still.

Even the dogs lay stretched and asleep. They were too languid when
awake to move with the shadows.

The fishing had been good. A number of splendid carp lay in a cool
watered crack between the great flat rocks. When one of these fish
appeared amongst the burley the thrust of spear was lightning-like. It
made hardly a ripple, yet it pierced the water deep. It was so smartly
withdrawn that the fish had scarcely time to cause even a bubble. By a
dexterous heave it was landed, and it lay to kick its life away in
that crack between the rocks.

Suddenly from away in the south-west a great billowing cloud hove into
view above the cliff and above the gum-tops. Then the wandering zephyr
became fierce. It swept on its way and brought down a shower of
rustling leaves.

[1. Wonga-Teooma australis.]

A haze, deep and sombre, crowded the scene. It was changed.

The fishermen glanced upwards, and then at one another.

They knew.

Up the gully came a boisterous gust. The placid water became a mass of
dense ripples in a moment. They dashed their little wavelets in
spiteful spray against the rocks. It was useless to fish any more.
Besides, an eerie feeling was abroad. The dogs whimpered and huddled
near some black or other-man, woman, or child., The old white-haired
chief stalked out into the sand patch that lay athwart the dwindled
stream, and cast a thoughtful glance at the heavens. The children
cowered. The whole camp became astir, and yet no one seemed to know
just where to go nor just what to do. Women shivered and drew their
'possum rugs closer over their shoulders, and children's teeth
chattered. They were susceptible and apprehensive.

Suddenly, too, the air was darkened, for the huge woolly mass of cloud
had encompassed the whole firmament, and blotted out the sun. Gusts
roared louder and louder. The myrtles seethed and rustled and quivered
and bent before it. Huge tree-tops swayed and shook, and their
interlaced branches tore and fought. A solitary bird high above
essayed to cross the gully, but was swept from its course and whirled
out of sight down stream. Now a great branch twirled and was snapped,
and came crashing through the undergrowth and lobbed on the ground
with a dull thud.

All the fishermen but one retreated. The one stood still. He was a
mighty man and the son of a chief--

Then came the thunder. It pealed amongst the timber and amongst the
people. With it came the blinding flash and the driven rain.

The chief led the way. The whole tribe rushed to a cave they knew of.
It was formed by the rolling, some long years before, of three huge
boulders against one another in such a way that an entrance was left,
and inside was room for several hundred people. The last to enter was
the chief's son. As he came another terrific crash of thunder and a
fearful flash of lightning tore the world. Women put their hands to
their eyes and ears, and children screamed. Men were struck dumb with
terror. Peal on peal, flash on flash came, and then a deluge poured
down outside, whilst the wanton gale swung the timber and felled the
great gums. Then came the most awful flash of all.

In a lull in the downpour something happened. Flame and sound came at
the same second. The clustering boulders were struck. A gum was
splintered and shattered, and the whole earth, it seemed to the
frightened tribe, was smitten, and it groaned and was hurled into
space. The great masses of rock shifted, and the entrance was closed.
Utter darkness fell in there. It was a thing that had never happened
to their world before.

The chief's son now felt that he had to do something to prove that he
was fit to rule when his old father passed away. The white-haired,
wrinkled man was too spent with his years to do anything. Somewhere in
the dark amongst his people he sat, and spoke not a word.

But the young man moved. He crawled cautiously inwards, his hands
always scouting before him. If he touched a wall he turned and tried
another direction.

He came to a passage so narrow and jagged that he cut his knees and
his forehead. But he kept on. Once he had to pull away a stone or two
in order to go further. At last he espied a thin streak of daylight.
It came down from the top. It was very wispy, but up there somewhere
was the light of day.

He listened.

There was no sound of thunder and no feel of rain. The giant storm had
passed on down the gully more rapidly than it came. Outside a faint
rumbling might then have been heard, but it was already far away. The
appalling bursts of wind had passed on, too, and all was still again.
Out of a clear, clean, blue sky the sun poured its westering beams
across, and thick columns of swaying mists rose up into that space
from which, as rain, they had come. Nature was smiling now, and the
world was better for the storm. A mass of broken green and leafy twigs
lay on the ground or were caught in the vines, and many floated,
water-logged, on the pools. But down underground a whole tribe lay
imprisoned and afraid to move.

All but the chief's son. He was now sensing the beauties of a
clarified day outside because of the tiny streak of light that was
with him.

A little more pushing and he came to the bottom of a shaft. He could
move a little dêbris and wrack, and he found that in the shaft he
could stand upright. He could see the blue sky above. He stooped and
coo-eed.

He was answered.

Then he lost his head, and he flung up his arms and commenced to
climb. Like a rock wallaby he squeezed himself up and up. Pressing
first one side and then the other, he forced his way towards the top.
He loosened stones and rubbish, and they fell to the bottom. But he
kept going on up. Near the entrance one boulder was poised. He placed
his weight upon it and it was loosened. It crashed to the bottom, and
that stopped any other person from following the chief's son. He
nearly went down with it. A handy branch was his salvation. He grasped
it, and with a mighty heave he was out of the pit.

He was saved.

And what of the rest? He leaned over and shouted. He heard the answer
faint below. But the loosened sides were still falling. He tried all
around and about, but there was no chance of getting between those
enormous rocks. The marks of the lightning were upon them. A wonderful
pattern of a tree was indelibly burnt into the stone, and is there
till this day.

We have heard it said that the place is in George's River, somewhere
behind Glenfield or Minto.

The sun sank as he does at the close of every day, and night fell
quickly down in the river. Up on the boulders the chief's son
slumbered.

Down below his people cried themselves to sleep. In the morning hunger
took possession. Everyone must eat. The great fish still lay down near
the water-holes. The escaped man sped there. He gathered up the fish,
as many as he could carry, and took them up to the mouth of the shaft.
Then he got some sarsaparilla vine, and with it and some rush he made
a rope. Then he raced back, and began to climb the rock again.

He slipped.

Oh, agony! He was falling down, down. Crash! He rolled, and in rolling
a jagged limb tore him badly.

He was pierced and his abdomen was cut badly.

But his thought for his people conquered the pain.

He got up again.

For days he fed them thus.

He grew weaker and weaker, but he fished and he fed the people. None
could get out to him. He could simply lower as much food as possible.
Some would live while others would die. This continued for many days.
Those who told the tale to white men said that it lasted for a whole
year.

Yet down in the prison the people were dying.

Then the tribe from Kurnell penetrated to behind Glenfield or Minto.
They had found no opposition and no sign of the George's River blacks
in any of their excursions for this whole year, so they became more
and more emboldened, and the fishing and hunting were good. By the
time they reached the place of the tragedy the chief's son was very
ill indeed. His wound had never healed. He kept it open by his
climbing up and his getting down. And the day came when the Kurnell
blacks were very near.

He heard them.

He lay down under the shade of some Christmas Bush and Waratahs. The
blooms were out and they shone red. He loved the waratah. He knew its
story, and he had many times sucked the sweet nectar from its flowers.
Beside him grew a little plant. He knew no use for it. But it was
destined to be of great use to him.

Now up the stream he knew of a trickling spring. Another gully wound
down its twisted way from above and opened into the bed of the river.
It was very narrow, and in wet weather a little torrent splashed down
from the flatter country above, and by means of a leaping waterfall it
joined the more swollen river. Its sides were far more dense than the
steep sides of the river. The Leptospermum flourished there, and
waratahs were in crimson splendour. Out from a rock wall at the side
gushed the spring. In dry times It simply was swallowed up in peaty
ground beneath the tea-tree and Leptospermum and Ceratopetalums, but
in rainy times it o'erbore them and joined the river.

A spirit often came out from that glen. It was speckled with glowing
fires that flashed and were covered, and flashed and were covered,
over and over again. The spirit was light and ethereal, for it could
never be seen in its entirety and it could never be heard. All the
tribe knew of it, and all held it in awe. All but the medicine man,
and he, sometimes, when he had donned the mystic pipe-clay bands, went
right up to the spring and talked with it there. When he came back he
bore with him beautiful bunches of ferns of many kinds-Hymenophyllum
and Asplenium, portions of the fronds of the Dicksonia, the Adiantum,
the Alsophila, excelsa, the Umbrella fern, the Acrostichurn and
others.

It must have been the spirit that came to the hero of this legend, for
as he lay exhausted someone took his hand and placed it on the little
amaryllis that seemed to him to be of no use. Immediately it moved and
grew. The leaves stretched up and up and became broader and broader.
It was a wonderful happening. Many leaves came, each one long and
broad and supple, and out from the central part came a long firm
stalk. It grew up and up until at several feet a flower formed.

The young man's wound was more painful now than ever before. He
pressed his hand to it and he found it to be bleeding. Then he swung
his hand over to that wonderful plant again and it became red with his
blood.

And it was warm.

It is always warm.

The young black slept. How long he slept no one knows. Whether it was
for hours, or days, or years, has never been told, but when he awoke
he was being well cared for. About his body was drawn one of the
leaves of the doryanthes excelsa. Out from his mia-mia he saw many of
these plants. They had come while he slept. All had leaves like
bandages, and many had stalks with great red buds to crown them. They
would be burst soon, and a flower as red as the waratah would be
there.

Women came and peeped at him. Children saw that he was awake, and they
laughed for joy.

Then a woman bent over him and deftly she wove another leaf bandage
around him. The old fern-root poultices, dried up, lay around about.
Then he knew who had tended him when he slept. And he felt strong
enough to get up.

Close by were the fallen rocks. There was still no way in or out.

So the first Gymea or Gigantic Lily came into being, and not long ago
men dug under the boulders and found a great heap of aboriginal bones.



WHY THE TURTLE HAS NO TAIL

The Australian aborigines believed that the Milky Way was a "pukkan"
or track, along which many spirits of departed blacks travelled to
heaven, and that the dark place that we call Magellan's Cloud was a
hole or split that occurred when the universe was frightfully shaken
by some mighty upheaval which gave us many of the wonders of Nature,
including the brilliant waratah, gorgeous caves such as Jenolan and
others less magnificent, burnt patches of rock, and so on.

Legends also make mention of a hidden river, over which certain
spirits have to travel to a Promised Land. This river flowed at the
edge of a mighty forest, and beyond a fearful range of huge jagged
mountains, at the nearer foot of which lay an extensive marshy lake,
in the centre of which was an enchanted island. The natives of the
South-East of Australia were very clear about the picture just
described. They said that not only had some people spoken to returned
men who had waded through the lake and been on the island and climbed
the mountain and nearly reached the river, but they had also had
amongst them at one time and another living men who had seen these
fairy places and always knew that a continuous stream of spirits
passed that way to the Unseen River.

Two giant trees grew on the bank, and a tortoise lay athwart it. Up to
the time of this happening all tortoises and turtles had long tails.
This tortoise reached from the bank just opposite the big trees, to
the other.

On the journey many spirits were supposed to be in some way tempted to
do evil, and succumbed to the temptation; therefore there were some
fallings by the way. Some were kept floundering about in the lake
itself, and these congregated on the island until they had expiated
their sins, when they were allowed to go on. Others failed when
climbing the mountain, and there on some barren peak they had to wait,
while others remained faithful until reaching the lower level, and
then were within sight of the river. But there was a test for them.
They had to squeeze between the trunks of the giant trees, and then
the bridge they reached was the tortoise.

Then came a time when many people quite good enough to get into heaven
failed to reach the opposite bank of the river. It was known that they
had got between the trees, and then all trace of them was lost; but
one day a man arrived amongst the people who had been remade, and he
told them his experiences.

He said that he had died and reached the tortoise on the unseen river.
He stepped upon it, and was half way along it when it gave a sly jerk,
and he fell off its tail into the river. He was borne along very
swiftly, for it is a fast flowing stream, and suddenly he was swept
underground. For a long time he was carried through deep subterranean
passages, and at last he came out into sunlight. He found himself
still in a river, and now it flowed between high banks, and playing in
it were blacks that he knew. Some were just swimming, some were
fishing, some were hiding in the rushes awaiting ducks. They did not
know of his presence, though some seemed to hear him, for they
suddenly became afraid and rushed off to their camp. At last he was
swept into the sea, and a great wave washed him ashore. As soon as he
touched land he found that he was changing. It took a long time, but
at last he became a man again, and when he looked at his chest and
felt his back he was aware of the scars that he 'had borne in his
other existence.

He now suggested that when the next great man died--the chief or the
doctor or the rainmaker or the clergyman--his best stone axe be buried
with him.

Then a sorcerer came forward and proclaimed that he would undertake to
go to the river and secure the passage of it for all time. He selected
some other brave people, and by the aid of his sorcery he set out on
the way of the spirits. He soon reached the forest, but found it full
of the "little men of the bush." They barred the way of the party. Try
as they would, no passage through the ranks of the "little men" could
be made. So then they turned and followed the flow of the river, and
that way no opposition was offered.

They came to a tree even higher than those at the crossing-place, and
up that the great sorcerer climbed. From the top of it he could see
the spirits stepping on to tail of the tortoise and some being shaken
off. Many of these were taken by the claws of the hind feet of the
beast and afterwards eaten. Others were carried down stream. The
shadow of the tree was impenetrable to the "little men," and a bright
star shed a beam to the tortoise.

The sorcerer saw that he must die before he could pass the little men
and he and his party returned home. He sharpened again his axe. He put
a sharpened bone in the fire, and scraped some of the burnt part off
into his food. Then he died, and as a good spirit, he reached the
giant trees, and there were no "little men" to stop him. But in their
place was a great snake that reared its head and prepared to strike.

With a blow of his axe he severed the head from the body, and picking
it up he squeezed between the trees and stepped on to the tail of the
tortoise. When he was about half way over, just as he had seen it do
to others, and just as the returned man had told it did to him, it
gave a great shake. But he was wary, and with another great blow of
his axe he cut the tail off. Quickly rushing to the other bank he
turned and swung the axe at the head of the tortoise and that was
severed too. Of this, though, he repented, and as the head swung down
the stream he put the head of the snake in its place. Then the beast
rolled over and sank out of sight.

And so now all tortoises and turtles have a snake's head and are tail-
less.

And if the last woman of the Illawarra Group, who is still living, is
asked about it, and if all the points of the story are examined, it
will be found that there is as much truth as fiction in it.

Those who ask, however, must have the right sympathy or they will hear
nothing.



THE FLOOD

The natives of the head waters of the Murray River, or as it is more
correctly called, the Hume River, had a story of a Deluge. Whether
this is identical with our Biblical story of the Flood, when Sisit, or
Noah, was advised to build an Ark and take animals into it for the
preservation of himself by providing his meat foods, and with the New
Zealand Maori's account of a Flood that covered the whole world, is
not clear. Our aborigines had no idea of so extensive a submersion of
the Earth as that.

But they did say that water covered a very great extent of country,
and all were drowned but two people. It was timed to be in what the
Central Australian natives call vaguely "the Alcheringa," and by that
they meant that they did not know when nor where, but from it was born
a separate race of human kind. The word "Alcheringa" was never used
except when at the time and from the happening an ancestor was brought
into being.

The worship of the blacks was always ancestor worship. They believed
in many gods, and one God would and did make other gods. They had no
conception of one God only. All. gods were equal, and came at the
"Alcheringa" period or era. Since that era there have been no gods
born, they said, and they did not expect any. There was, in their
belief, no "Second Coming."

There was to be a betrothal.

A boy of a certain family group was, when he grew up, to be the
husband of a woman of another family group belonging to another tribe
or race.

But no one could fix upon any girl. All the girl babies that were born
were closely examined by the old priest of the boy's family group, but
none could he see of which he could say that it was the one he was
looking for. Meanwhile the boy was growing up, and the time drew near
when he was to be taught in the proper school or corroboree what it
was right for him to know. And he was proving to be a very fine type
of boy. He outshone all the others in looks and build and feats of
boy-strength.

Now it happened that there was one article of food that he was not
permitted to eat. That was the fruit of the Styphelia triflora-a sort
of five-corner. The Astroloma pinifolium, which is something like the
Styphelia, he could eat, and he was very fond of it. He gathered it in
plenty, and he pounded it and mixed the flour of it with water from
the river, and when he had made a cake of it he roasted it upon the
embers of the fires that were left by his mother.

In his searching for his favourite fruit he travelled far, for he came
over the range to the coast, and there he fell in with another tribe.
With them he travelled north, and must have penetrated into the
district of Illawarra, which is the most beautiful part of Australia,
and has been called the "Garden of New South Wales." The pity is that
another part has filched for land-booming purposes, the beautiful
aboriginal name of "Illawarra," and applied it to a part that has no
claim to be called a garden, and the people of Illawarra have allowed
it, and have become content to call their district "The South Coast,"
which it in turn has no claim to.

Here he found the Achras australe or Brush Apple. This was not his
totem, but he did not know that, and with the rest of the people he
ate it. Immediately he was seized with a longing to taste the
Styphelia triflora's fruit and he set out to find the way back to his
own people. He crossed the Shoalhaven River and journeyed night and
day down the coast. All the people whom he met were very friendly and
would have made him welcome with them, but he did not stay. They saw
his fine proportions and superior bearing, and in their ignorance and
superstition they soon accounted for his appearance by crediting him
with supernatural powers.

He passed right on under the Pigeon House which was, years and years
afterwards, noticed by Captain Cook, and over what we know as the
Clyde River, and then he headed up amongst the huge mountains and
tremendous gorges, on and on, until he espied the familiar peaks of
his own country. He could then look away to the west. In the distance
on his left hand he saw the bold, snow-covered peaks and crags of our
Mount Kosciusko, which is the highest peak in Australia. This youth of
the time of the Alcheringa had grown, during his travels, into a young
man, and yet he had had no chance to be initiated into the secrets and
mysteries of his station.

While journeying on the great heights of the mountains he chanced upon
a certain cave. There were no people near that he could see, and yet
in it he found a bundle of spears and boomerangs, and other
implements. He chose one of the best of the spears and stood gazing
upon it, for it was of very fine workmanship. The head was of a
material he had never seen before. It was white and shining, and its
point and barbs were very sharp and extremely hard. He believed it to
be made of a stone that did not exist anywhere in the country that he
knew of. In this he was right for its presence there was the result of
a wonderful system of barter that was practised in those days. Natives
of the coast, especially those whose ancestor was responsible for the
existence of the Livistona Palms, traded the heart of the palm for the
hard quartzite of the far-distant districts. They sent the white,
nutty heart of the palm through the various family groups and tribes
until it reached those who had the coveted spearheads, and by the same
manner of conveyance the spearheads reached the man who obtained the
other article. Sometimes it took many months for the exchange to be
completed, but in no instance was any unfair dealing resorted to.

Suddenly the young aborigine dropped the spear back on the bundle. It
was not his. Though he had never been to school he knew that it was
wrong to take it. He left the cave, and rounding a cliff he saw
another. In it were sticks of a different pattern. But they were, all
but one, wrapped up in bark and tied round with rushes. The one was
lying uncovered and enclosed in the bones of a human hand. The
skeleton lay near. Someone had been handling the stick, and in
handling it died. The youth was afraid. He turned about in the cave
and looked out. His quick eyes were keen in their glance, and there
down below him he saw a native peering from behind a eucalyptus tree.

This native chanced to be the rainmaker of his particular tribe. He
had been preparing the ground for the rainmaking ceremony. He had seen
the youth. No action of his was missed. And the rainmaker was pleased.
He made friendly signs and then he came to the cave. In one side of it
was a deposit of red ochre. The rainmaker got some of that, and taking
a short piece of waratah stick from his hair in which it was concealed
he smeared it with red ochre. Then he "sang" it.

This was a strange sight to the youth. He knew nothing of ceremony. He
gazed in wonder at the rainmaker, who saw that he was uninitiated.

Then the rainmaker did wrong. He was so overjoyed to find so fine and
comely a youth quite ignorant of the arts and magic of great people
that his vanity became overpowering, and he danced and sang in his
delight. As he danced he gave way to such an exultation that he jumped
amongst the bones of the skeleton and he disturbed the piece of wood
and turned it over. Then he saw that it had strange markings and many
hieroglyphics. He bent down and seized it and swung it in the air and
tossed it from hand to hand.

He kept this up until he was exhausted, and then he sat down and
examined what he had picked up. There were marks on it that he
understood. It was the sacred stick of the rainmaker of thousands of
years before. So he "sang" that too.

To "sing" anything was to utter incantations or prayers while looking
at it, and that praying was supposed to give the article or the
ancestor who caused it to come into being the power to bring about a
certain wished-for result. Of course there was much more to be done
than just to pray. There were mostly many ceremonies to be gone
through, and as many as twelve months were required in which to
complete some, what may be termed, services.

He poised the stick upon his open palm, and marching round the cave
like Germans doing the goose-step, he balanced it first on the middle
of his palm, and then worked it along to the tip of his index finger,
then back and up his forearm, and again to his palm. All the time he
was doing this he was uttering a chant. It was a prayer to the
ancestor of his family group, who fell from heaven in a rain and
entered the side of a mountain not far away.

Then he asked the youth to accompany him to the site that he had
marked out as the church where he was to begin the ceremony that would
cause rain.

From this point smoke could be seen curling its wisps up through the
eucalyptus trees where the remainder of the group-people awaited the
call of the rainmaker.

Putting his hands to his mouth he coo-eed.

This was answered from below.

Then he called and told his people to come up, intimating that if all
did not come he would make rain that would never stop and all the
creeks would become swollen, tearing, smashing, crashing torrents of
destruction, and all the rocks would tumble down and the great
mountains would be washed level: and Mount Kosciusko would shed its
mantle of snow and everybody would be killed or drowned but him. He
would cause the sacred stick to grow into a great tree that would
reach up to heaven, and he only would be able to climb it and thus
reach where the flood did not come.

Then he told them that he would not like to cause the death of the
stranger that was with him. But he would make the stranger as his son.

Then someone asked what stranger he meant.

So he told the youth to go down to the people and show himself.

On the way there were some Styphelias. The youth plucked the berries
and crushed them and ate them. From that moment his eyes were opened.
He saw evil as well as good. The evil seemed best.

Now amongst the people there was a maiden who brushed close to the
youth as he walked. And she, too, was eating styphelias. The youth
offered her some of what he had, and they stopped to eat together. The
rest went on up to the church, and already the rainmaker had begun the
service.

He had marked himself with the red ochre and he held the sacred stick
that he got in the cave. He had no idea but that the youth he had met
was somewhere with the people and was seeing for the first time the
sacred service or ceremony or corroboree or whatever we like to call
it. So he put far more vim into it than he otherwise would have done.
He told of the sacred stick that he had, and the more he talked the
more excited he grew. He even went so far as to say that the strange
youth was brought by him into the cave and that henceforth he would be
of great service in assisting to bring rain.

Then he asked that the youth come forward.

There was no answer.

He called in a loud voice and the people looked all around. The women
and children who were sitting some distance back from the men also
looked all about. There was no sign of the strange youth and no sign
either of one of the maidens of the tribe.

They told the rainmaker.

He became very angry. He made one more appeal to the rain ancestor to
send rain down and then he brought the proceedings to a close. He
erased all the marks that he had drawn on the ground. He rubbed all
the drawings from his body. At last he threw the sacred stick with
such force to the ground that it was smashed to pieces, and he ordered
the men to scatter through the forest and into the gullies and about
the rocky hillsides until the youth and maiden were found.

He asked the advice, however, of the chief, and the old warrior gave
him permission to order as he would. He must, however, not go himself,
for the chief was afraid of his magic and he wanted to stay beside him
until the rain came.

Then from out the place where the broken sacred stick was flung a
river gushed. It poured down amongst the women and children. The
strong sun drew much of it up into the sky and clouds were quickly
formed. They turned to rain, and so water was pouring out from the
earth and out from the sky. Big trees were being washed out by the
roots, and great rocks began to fall and to hurtle down the slopes.
The whole mountain soon became a crashing mass of trees and shifting
boulders and earth slides, and the valleys were being filled with
water and dêbris. All the sacred sticks were washed out of the cave
and were whirled about in the water with the trees and all the other
wrack.

This went on until not a mountain top could be seen, and every tree
was either covered with water or was felled.

Every tree save one.

One tree showed up above the whole flood.

And in its branches were four people.

The rainmaker was one. The strange youth and the girl who ate
styphelia berries with him were there, and so, too, was the old priest
of the boy's own tribe who had been searching for the girl to be
betrothed to him.

This old man was the only person on earth now who could say whether or
not the youth and the girl were to be man and wife. Up there on the
tree-tops he bade them to do nothing that would bring upon them the
wrath of the magic that lay all around and about the world.

But what troubled them most was how to send the waters all away so
that they could come down and eat and live. Somehow it was known that
the boy had eaten of the forbidden styphelia fruit and he had to be
purged of it.

So they tried all ways that they could think of to make him sick, and
at last they succeeded. He became so weak under the treatment that he
would have fallen into the water and been drowned had not the girl
wrapped her long hair about him and tied both him and herself to the
bough.

The rainmaker, too, fell ill. He had done great wrong and he was
mostly responsible for the calamity that had overtaken the world.
While the boy was recovering the rainmaker was becoming worse. The
priest and the youth talked about it and it was agreed that the
rainmaker must die. Not until he passed away would the flood go down
argued the priest, and when he became quite convinced about it, he
simply pushed the sick sinner into the water, and he sank and was no
more.

During the night the flood went down and the marooned persons
descended to the earth.

The only eatable thing was the berry of the styphelia. Not one of that
plant was destroyed. Even those that grew amongst the fallen mountains
were not killed but survived in the wet mud that was everywhere.

And that, the youth dare not eat.

Now growing deep down in a crevice between some fallen boulders was a
plant called "Native Flax."

It has a seed that is wrapped round with a furry material, and no one
would think that it is good for food.

But the youth was very hungry and he thought he would try it.

It was quite sweet and full of oil. So that kept him alive while the
others ate styphelia.

Birds soon came back from somewhere and because they still were wet,
for the sun was not strong after the great flood, they were easily
caught.

And the Owenia acidula or "mooley plums" quickly grew and ripened.

And the waratahs bloomed, each flower giving many drops of sweet
honeyed juice.

One day the girl was not to be found. Both the old priest and the
young man searched everywhere for her, and they could find only very
few traces. There were some, and these they followed until it became
too dark to go further. The priest lit a fire, and there, before its
faint light, in the dense bush, with towering new-formed mountains and
heaps of the earth shutting them in, the young aborigine was inducted
into the usages and the beliefs of his people concerning marrying and
giving in marriage.

There were many things that a woman must never be allowed to do. She
would undertake the things that even she herself did not want and if
her husband allowed this, much ill would result. There was, too,
certain work that was hers and hers alone. The only food that she had
to provide was the yam that could be dug out of the ground. She must
always carry a short, pointed yamstick. If a family bereavement
occurred she had to show her sorrow only in certain ways, and it was
the province of her husband to see to it that she did it. Men had to
show sorrow in other ways and for other occurrences.

All that sort of thing was told to the young man, and the telling of
it was accompanied with much handshaking and body patting and it
lasted far into the night.

All the necessary vows were taken, and a record of it was made by the
priest on his sacred stick. He had cut the stick from a callitris, or
Cyprus pine, and already he had inscribed a good many stories.

Next day the girl came back.

She had never been far away, and she was watching for just what she
saw.

So from then on they were man and wife, and the old priest went into a
cave and died. He took with him his sacred stick, and hundreds of
years afterwards-perhaps thousands-Tom Adamson found some remains of
him not far from Adaminaby. Tom took the stick to the blacks, and they
knew all the story. They said that they were descended from that youth
and that maiden, but that, of course, their real ancestor was very far
back from them. Tom was just the sort of man to whom the aborigines
told the things that they were usually too shy to tell. The old
humbugs of priests knew their own duplicity, and in spite of the hold
that they had upon the rest, they were always afraid that white men
would find them out.

They often thought that the white men were reincarnations of their own
holy men. So for that reason was much of their secretiveness. And
those who did not pretend to have seen burning bushes that were not
consumed, and tables of stone that were miraculously written upon,
were afraid of the magic that was hidden everywhere, and could be
called into play by the old priestly humbugs.

There is a peculiar hole near the road with the marks of the natives
all round it. They said that out of it at long, long periods many
living blacks came, and always amongst them was a clever rainmaker.
and at least one who belonged to the styphelia totem, and he must not
eat of the fruit of the plant. Should he do so he would bring upon the
people some great ill-probably cause another rainmaker to so conduct
himself as to bring down another flood.



HOW THE WARATAH GOT ITS HONEY

Krubi was the name of the beautiful black girl who became a waratah,
and amongst the aborigines of the Burragorang Valley the name is only
given to one girl of any tribe, of all its branches; and then only
when the mother or the father has been reckoned to be very good
looking, and the child is expected, therefore, to bear the same
advantage (if advantage it is); so that not a baby girl can be
christened Krubi until the former Krubi is dead.



THE STORY

Once upon a time, not long after the original Krubi had become a
waratah plant, and her red cloak had made the brilliant hue of the
flower, and only a very few other Krubis had ever been so named, a
young lubra wife had determined that should she ever have a girl baby
it must bear the coveted name. The living Krubi was very old, and
already she had more than once failed to carry what her youngest child
had put into her dilly-bag. That was the sign that her husband could
leave her to the care of that youngest child, instead of staying back
to aid her along.

The young wife wished for old Krubi's death very much. She was never
far away when Krubi was being assisted by Warrindie, the youngest Of
her family. But never did the good-looking lubra (Woolyan) so much as
place her hand under Krubi's elbow.

But Krubi was wonderfully tenacious of life. She battled on.

She was relieved from all work. She had only to carry the dilly-bag
when the tribe were moving, and they did not move much.

Woolyan grew very anxious. Her longing for the death of Krubi grew a
passion. At last she determined to "bone" Krubi. No woman had ever
done that. Only the men of her tribe were accustomed to kill by
"boning."

So Woolyan picked out the fine shinbone of a big dingo, and she rubbed
it with sand from the bed of the creek until it was white and smooth,
and she hid it in her hair, awaiting the time when she could catch
Krubi alone.

Many days sped by; several moons came and went.

Then the blacks determined to have a corroboree.

A good young man had been having private lessons in the things that
were taught which Krubi and Woolyan and the other women were not
permitted to see, and then came the great night.

It was very dark. A space had been cleared amongst the giant gum
trees. But whilst it was still daylight the young women had chosen
their places. Woolyan was delighted to see that Krubi was not well
enough to take her place in the little march that the active old women
made. So she got up from her place, and going back to Krubi, she
hurriedly undid her hair that she had done up to hold the bone
concealed, but before she could catch hold of it the thing fell to the
ground.

Old Krubi saw it.

Then did old age give place to greater activity than youth possessed.
With a bound and a yell Krubi jumped forward and stamped her foot on
the death-dealing bone.

And Krubi's youngest bounded too. Woolyan was caught in a grip that
she could not shake off, and blow after blow found her face and head
and shoulders.

The corroboree was abandoned. The tribe surrounded the fighting women.
But the chief demanded that the hubbub stop, and Krubi tell the cause
of the trouble.

The sentence upon Woolyan was death. Before she was to die she "went
bush." The beautiful waratahs were in bloom, and when Woolyan saw them
all her false pride and hatred left her.

Kneeling beside a plant covered with the beautiful red flowers, her
tears fell into them. They were tears of repentance. And as she wept
her child was born.

She laid it at the foot of a waratah bush.

When the men who were to club her to death came and saw her they were
filled with a great compassion.

So they sent for old Krubi.

There was a great reconciliation, and the tears of both women fell
into the waratahs.

Woolyan's husband happened to smell the blooms and the scent was good.
He plucked one separate flower, and the liquid within it crept into
his fingers, He put them into his mouth, and, lo, the taste was very
sweet!

So that day the waratah became a further source of comfort to the
aborigines.

Sir James Smith wrote of it in 1793: "It is, moreover, a great
favourite with the natives upon account of a rich honeyed juice which
they sip from its flowers."



WHY THE SUN SETS

Out on the Murrumbidgee there is a tale about the setting sun. The
country there is very different from what it is where the aborigines
had a story of the Escapees.

It is flat.

It seems to be below, far below, the level of the sea.

And the sun can be seen setting.

The land which contains the great, dreary salt lakes-Frome, Eyre,
Gardiner, Amadeus, Torrens, and a lot of others named and unnamed, is
really below the sea's level, and if ever a canal is cut from the head
of Spencer Gulf to the bed of those lakes a vast extent of territory
will become an ultra-salt inland sea.

But though the country through which the greater part of the
Murrumbidgee and the Lachlan and the Darling flow seems very low, it
is still above the level of the great oceans.

It seems to be a disc, like a huge plate.

Turn which way one will, the horizon is sharp and level and lies all
around. In the summer (and summer sets in in October and lasts until
the end of March) the sun rises a huge fiery red ball. Before he
appears he sends his torrid shafts, and the earth is dried and heated.
With his horrible advance agents of wilting beams the flies are a
wracking buzz and a stinging poison as they wing their nauseous way
about, and all the other insect life starts into pestering being.

The smell of baked earth rises, and the dried grasses stand stiffly
and starkly.

The level east lightens; and slowly, surely, and relentlessly the
great red disc ascends and throws long shadows across the ground.

The dwarfed and gnarled gums seem to beg for some respite. The sombre
Murray Pines cluster in masses as if seeking the solace and protection
of one another's company.

By the advent of the first month of summer the few orchids that
bloomed in the short spring have gone, and the glowing grasses have
seeded and died.

It is now a bare and browned and sere world.

The sun changes from red to grey, and as he wends his solemn way up to
the zenith he pours out molten light.

Lazy clouds of dust rise up from the new-formed roads, stirred by
waggoned teams, and flatten and float out over the trees.

Shadows grow less and less until they are only patches directly below
the bushes.

Life is a dreary and painful process.

Horses stand mutely, head to tail, close to any tree stumps that may
be there; sheep huddle, panting, out in the glaring sun; birds sit on
the boughs with wings opened and mouths agape; nothing lives in the
wilting day-everything crouches in whatever of shade can be found.

Over and above passes the molten ball, and as he slowly descends
towards the horizon of the west, and the east begins to blacken, life
stirs again, and all beings long for the cool of night.

Many nights are but little cooler than the day.

The gay, glowing flowers of the sandstone elevations are not here. No
epacrids, no boronias, no waratahs!

The deep restful greens of the laurels, and the glowing browns of the
turpentines and woollybutts and ironbarks and lilly-pillies do not
show. The banksias are stunted. Only the hardiest trees grow, and the
most transient of the grasses, and they are poor and bare-all except
the annual grasses. They are the saving of the land.

It was not always so.

The aborigines have a legend-born of their stricken condition, and of
that wonderful and unexplainable knowledge of their past history as is
revealed to us by our geologists and scientists-which tells of a time
when the earth was not parched by such a sun; when it was ever day,
but the daylight was the radiance of a human ancestor, and when the
trees and shrubs and flowers were as bright and plentiful as they are
now in the regions that are not wilted by our sun.

The sun, they say, is an ancestor-a human that was not understood, and
he retired in sorrow and became a god and thus came light-so came the
setting sun.

A family which claimed the sleeping lizard as its totem was camped in
a scrub of Murray Pine (a callitris); and, with wurleys built against
a number of seared logs, lived, not far away, a family of which the
brown-banded snake was the totem.

During the winter months good rains had fallen, and the ground was
clothed with many beautiful grasses and much wild parsley, and rearing
its pretty pink three-leaved and fringed flowers amongst the grasses
was the Thysanotus tuberosus, or Fringed Violet.

The Kennedya and the Hardenbergia clambered over the old time-worn
stumps, and the acacias poisoned the air with their pollen.

Down on the ground were the purple and white wild violets. The
sleeping lizards fraternised good-naturedly with the snake-people, and
all "was merry as a marriage bell."

There was a plethora of foods-birds, animals, roots, and berries.

Amongst the snake people two young men strove for the one maiden, and
there had been many quarrels because no one seemed to know to which
she had been promised.

Meeting after meeting had been called, and the clamour at every one
was great.

At last it was decided that he who made the finest stone spear-head
for presentation to the father of the girl should have her.

She often spent many hours running from one to the other and she was
not innocent of jeering and jibing at both the anxious workmen.

When the proofs of their handicraft were brought to the wurley of the
father he pretended to fly into a great rage. He denounced the young
men and scoffed at the spearheads-all of them. He rushed to the King
and implored him to condemn the lot. He spat on them and flung them
amongst the women, who picked them up and flew into as big a pretence
of anger as the man.

The contest was renewed and it continued until the pleasant weather
had gone, and the light that came from whatever member of the
priesthood held the power to so propitiate the light-giver as to
vouchsafe day to the world, began to wane, and it was nearly time for
another magician to be appointed to carry on.

To the surprise of everyone, one of the contestants proclaimed himself
to be the proper magician.

Now the duties pertaining to such an office were many and arduous.

The priest had to spend long periods in prayer and meditation out on
the plain by himself. He had to submit to much indignity-even
flagellation, and he had to ostracise himself in other ways.

There were not many natives who cared to be considered the special
emissary to the ancestor of the light.

And in this young man's case it meant giving up the girl.

But the dispute was not to be settled.

Withdrawing from the contest did not give the other man the right to
his claim.

If winning in the set competition could not happen, then some other
way must be chosen by the priest.

And he was not in any hurry to give a pronouncement.

In the meantime the girl did not cease her teasing.

She still jeered at both the newly-announced magician and the other
contestant.

This became distasteful to the old women, whose charge she was, and
they set her to perform many tasks that otherwise would not have
fallen to her lot.

Perhaps never before did so young a girl have to grind the grass
seeds. She had to find out for herself how to hold the stone between
the calves of her legs and how to use the grinder.

She became a wife without being married, for it was a wife's duty to
make most of the cakes.

One day she found her suitor to be busy making a shield.

He was drawing the circles and the radiating lines that represented
the light of day.

But in it he drew the sleeping lizard.

It was meant as sarcasm, and it was hoped that this piece of portrayed
scorn would bring some evil to his rival. He would much have preferred
to go on with the competition until one or the other had won. He was
becoming anxious to secure the wife, and this delay was beginning to
annoy him.

The newly recognised magician was out somewhere in communion with the
saints or the spirits or whatever it is that such people have found
when they come back with tales of supernatural visitations while they
are either figuratively or really eating locusts and wild honey.

Now the artistry of the young man was good.

The girl was really interested.

She sat beside him watching intently every mark.

And as they sat thus the old lightmaker died, and the new one emerged
from his solitude and commenced the ceremony of light making so that
it would continue.

As he was so young the light nearly went out. The semi-darkness that
ensued was bewildering and it struck terror into everyone.

The tribe implored the young magician to put forth every endeavour,
and his answer was that without the girl he could not make more light
than there was then.

The people looked all around, but they could not see the wanted girl.
No one knew where she had gone.

Then they saw that the young lover was missing also.

The light maker grew very angry.

All the gesticulations, all the genuflexions, all the grotesque
dancing that were resorted to in anger, he indulged in.

His anger grew very real and it communicated itself to his people.
Even the King himself became as the rest.

That feeling gave way to despair. Women sat in groups and beat
themselves and one another and inflicted severe wounds. Priests
hurriedly drew sacred totemic marks on the ground and drew similar
designs on the bodies of those whose right it was to bear them. Mitres
were fashioned and put on the heads of the higher clergy. Fires were
lit to augment the lessened light of the day.

After a while a hunting party was organised to hunt up the missing
people, and upon being blessed they seized their spears and shields
and bounded off.

The light maker forgot his mission. He yearned for the girl, and
without saying a word he betook himself off to search.

After a very long time he found her.

She was living in a slight depression--a crabhole--that is pointed out
to-day by all who know this story.

The man with whom she was living was away at the time, and the light
maker appealed to her to come to him.

So together they ran, and all the light of day went with them. The
further they went the less the light grew until they were right on the
edge of the world.

There a son was born to them, and because of the wrong, the father and
mother died.

Never since the beginning of the trouble had the daylight been so
clear or so strong as before it, and now it was leaving the earth for
ever. No one else could ever receive the instructions that would make
him a light maker. The great ancestor needed a mediator between
himself and the world, and it had to be a lizard man, and now no
lizard man knew what to do.

The daylight faded right away.

In its going it was much more beautiful than ever before. Long streaks
of gold spread over the sky, and as that faded everything became
awestricken, and the world was hushed.

Even now there is that period "while the air 'twixt dark and
daylight's standing still."

But the baby that was born away over there grew and became at once a
light man. He held direct communion with the great ancestor and he
gathered great quantities of light in his hands.

So he set out to find his way back to where he knew his people dwelt.
There was one thing he did not do.

He was born with his back to his people, and he did not turn round. He
just walked on and on.

He had great waters to travel over, and great beds of sand to travel
through, and great forests to find his way in, and great mires to wade
across, but he kept going.

He was determined to find his people and to bring them light. So a
time came when the tribe saw light breaking away over in the east. It
had disappeared on the one hand and it reappeared on the other.

They were overjoyed.

But the priests counselled great caution.

No one knew what to say or do.

The priests and the King said that if they made the wrong ceremony
they would lose the light.

So they waited mutely and watched it. There was no welcoming shout.
The birds sang to it. The trees nodded to it. Flowers bowed to it.
Dewdrops left the earth and flew to it. But men and women were mute
because they were afraid that they may do the wrong thing and it would
leave them for ever and all their days would be dark and they could
not live.

Therefore the light maker sailed over their heads. He went on to the
edge of the world where he was born.

The priests said that when they had found out how to worship him he
would come down out of the sky and remain with them for ever, but
while in ignorance in that respect he would continue to go over their
heads and disappear.

They are still in ignorance. That is why there is no sun worship.

The new sun man became more beloved than any had been before, and so
the ancestor made him a god like himself, even if the father and
mother did do wrong.

And the ancestor sometimes gives him huge quantities of light, and as
it is thrown down to the earth it burns and sears and scorches.

So we have summer. If we could only find out how to carry out the
proper ceremony of sun worship then there would be no more great heat
waves.

This is the tale of the aborigines who live in those parts where the
summer is scorching. It accounts for more things than will be seen at
first reading.

When the light is not being thrown in large quantities the days are
not scorching and the grass is green and the trees are not so dry and
the great cracks in the ground are closed up and the little flowers
are blooming and all is gay.



WHAT THE MOON IS

There are very many legends concerning the moon, and the writer has
succeeded in collecting fully a dozen of them. There is, strangely,
much similarity about them all, though some are from parts as far
distant from this one, which belongs to the Murray, as Central
Queensland.

This is perhaps the prettiest, and was obtained from a young native
who lived mostly in a compound at Wahgunyah. He was camped with two
gins on a reserve near Burryjaa Station, in N.S.W., and it was with
considerable surprise that the writer found him so ready to talk.

Like all aborigines who tell things so close to the supernatural, he
continually looked around about in order to be sure he was not
overheard either by any other blacks or by spirits. He was afraid that
he might inadvertently say something that people of his totem were
forbidden to reveal. That night the moon had not yet risen, and it was
plain to me that the three were not a little frightened. The lubras
stayed in the little gunyah that the man had built, and plainly did
not want to be caught eavesdropping.

All the same, they could not forbear to come out to glance towards the
hotel. They were fond of whisky.

Here is the story: In the years before history--the Alcheringa-before
the river Murray was made, and only a depression existed, a Bunyip
visited the place. He came just at nightfall, and he sat on the bank
opposite the camp. He was the colour of the gum-tree that afforded him
shelter and something to lean against. Behind him was a swamp, and the
man who first saw him had been quietly waiting amongst the rushes,
kneeling with just his head above the water and with rushes tied about
him. He had succeeded in grabbing a few unsuspecting ducks that sailed
within reach, and now he was coming, still with rushes tied about him,
and with ducks in his hand, back to the camp.

The Bunyip saw him and pressed himself closer against the tree trunk,
working himself around it as it was being passed by the hunter. But
the hunter detected the movement, and he yelled in his fear. The
Bunyip reached out for him, but only succeeded in tearing some of the
rushes from him. He scrambled down into the depression and up the bank
on the other side, and by that time the people who had heard his yell
were alert and watching for him to appear. Amongst the most active and
anxious was the young woman to whom he was soon to be married. Indeed,
she ran forward to meet him, and she took the ducks from him to
relieve him of that slight burden, and she spoke some soothing words
to him. Also she laughed at his fear, and when he had rapidly
explained what he had seen she laughed the louder.

This caused a fatal delay. The Bunyip heaved himself up the bank, and,
seizing the girl, he raced away with her to the swamp.

Without lengthening the story as the aborigine did by describing the
consternation of the camp, and the agony of the young man, we will
confine ourselves to the doings of the girl. Her struggles in the
swamp could be heard even as far off as the camp, but no one could
rescue her, for no human being could withstand a Bunyip, especially at
night. However, when day dawned, the young man gathered up his spears,
and went over to the swamp. He searched for the track of the Bunyip
and he found it. Then he caught a number of frogs and tied their legs
together and fastened them to a stake that he drove into the ground on
the track. All day he waited, and neither saw nor heard anything of
the girl nor the Bunyip.

Next day he went there again, and the frogs were gone.

The Bunyip, he thought, had eaten them. So he got some more and tied
them and fastened the rush cord to the stake.

Day after day he did this.

His people tried to persuade him to accompany them, for they were
about to move their camp, but he steadfastly refused to go. He said
that one day the Bunyip would come out for his feed of frogs, and he
would slip past into the lair, and his young girl would again be with
him, and he would then bring her home.

So they went without him.

Then the day dawned when he saw them. There was misty rain falling,
and in it the Bunyip appeared leading the girl. He was coming for his
meal, and because of the rain he thought it was night. The man was
dreadfully afraid, but he stood his ground. When the Bunyip saw him he
roared. When the girl saw him she held out her hands and she wept. The
man simply stared into the beast's eyes, and gradually it felt fear.
He suddenly threw something at it, but the Bunyip was too quick. He
threw a frog and it hit the man in the eye and blinded it. Nothing
daunted the man hurled a spear and he blinded one of the Bunyip's
eyes. Smarting with pain, the fearsome beast fled, and the man flung
himself forward to clasp the girl. But she was under a spell. She was
obliged to follow her captor. So a chase commenced. The Bunyip tore
through the swamp, over the sandy patch where the prickly hakeas grew
and the leptospermums and the banksias were in flower, and pretty
blooms like the Actinotus and Thysonotus and Dillwynia and Tetratheca
were glowing gaily. He reached the country where eucalypti and
callitris, stood, and ran past the sleeping country and a mountain
which we call Mount Goombargona. It is a round hill that stands up out
of flat paddocks, on the top of which a bush-ranger named Morgan had a
lookout and a cave in our time.

A gum-tree grew there, and up that the Bunyip with his one eye
climbed. At the foot the girl hesitated. She was afraid that she!
could not climb well enough to scale so high a tree. To it came,
panting and exhausted and suffering pain, the young man. And by that
time it was night. The unfortunate lover was within a few paces of the
object of his affections, and with his one eye he looked at her; but
he also looked at the Bunyip. There he sat in the topmost branches of
the eucalyptus tree, and he stared with his one eye, and his one eye
and his staring fascinated the man.

He could not move. He, too, then came under the magic of the Bunyip,
but he withstood it. No other blacks came near the place and there the
three remained, until one day a storm came and blew down the tree,
leaving the eye hanging in the sky. The Bunyip had died, and no one
knew it. But now the man and the girl were freed from the spells, and
they slowly returned the way they had come, and eventually found their
people.

Their children are frog people, and they do not destroy frogs, leaving
them to be food for the Bunyips so that those fearsome creatures may
be appeased.

The eye left in the sky is the moon.



HOW THE WHITE WARATAH BECAME RED

There is really a white waratah.

It occurs in New South Wales and in Tasmania.

It is not a distinct variety unless we consider a flower a variety
simply because of its colour.

The white of New South Wales and that of Tasmania are speciosissima
and truncata respectively, though the plants always bear blooms of the
colour even though they are in close proximity to those of the usual
glowing red.

In Tasmania white waratahs are in some profusion. In New South Wales
pink ones have been found, and they surely have in some way been
impregnated. Occasionally the white ones have had a creamy tinge at
the base of the pistils and in such cases the flowers have obtained
some food that is usually the property of the foliage.

In New South Wales white waratahs have been found, and may still be
found at Mittagong, at Sherbrooke and on the Jamberoo Mountain.

The natives of Sherbrooke had a legend of the changing of the white to
red, and perhaps this story shows that it was believed that the first
were white and the change to red was a later tffect. Of this we are
not sure.

In the dense dark jungle there, a sleek and beautiful wonga pigeon
lived. The rich soil in the gullied and sunken flats produced
wonderful vegetation. Supplejacks and bloodwoods, cedars and monstrous
turpentine! Great bushy lillypillies, overgrown myrtles, big laurels,
towering eucalypts (E. Consideniana, the White Ash, E. Smithii, even
E. Sieberiana, the Silver-top) shut out the daylight. Climbing plants
grew there, with sweet smelling Sassafras (Atherosperma moschatum) and
white Musk Daisy-bush (Olearia argophylla). In their shade the Flying
Fox had camped for centuries unmolested.

Underfoot, the carpet of dark fallen leaves was feet thick. Down in
there the horrible leech waved and swayed in his blind search for an
animal to fasten upon in order to get his fill of blood, while the
brown bottle-tick lost no time in detaching himself from his habitat
to bury his proboscis in some unfortunate passer-by, in the same quest
as the leech.

In there, too, were gorgeous parrots and pretty pigeons and bower-
birds, and tits and wrens, and such a host of the feathered tribes as
to make them seem like a moving mass of wings and swaying feathers.

Big brush wallabies softly hopped or curled in a tangled bower; the
bush rat and the bandicoot peeked from their seclusion, and the native
cat slunk about as only felines can.

There, in this deep, dank, dark, sweet-smelling Australian jungle
stepped daintily and cooed quickly and loudly, that proud wonga.

Sailing serenely up above it all were the hawk and the eagle.

While the wonga remained indoors she was safe.

Up over the cliff, where the country was flat, the bush was rocky and
open and dry. A dryer air pervaded, the ground was no carpet of fallen
leaves, but a hot, sandy or gravelled area with but few fallen leaves,
for there was no underscrub.

The hawk's piercing eye saw every move there.

The white waratah gazed skyward and felt dreadfully alone. All around
the waratahs grew and perhaps they were red, and this one was the only
one without colour, and it longed to be crimson like its neighbours of
its own botanical genus.

The handsome wonga had lost her mate. Her grey spots glowed against
their bed of white; her little pink legs strode briskly on, and she
scratched and scratched and turned up insects and grubs, and she fed
well.

But when her thoughts turned to companionship she discovered that she
was lonely. So she coo-ed and coo-ed, ever more and more rapidly, and
in higher and higher tones.

She stretched herself upon tip-toes and searched the jungle. She
ceased to look for a surfeit of food, and she stepped on and on,
always approaching the creek where beyond it the cliff rose, and above
it was the open forest.

Up out there she would go!

So she opened her wings, and, heavy as she was, she rose with a great
and ponderous flapping.

Increasing her speed, she swept by the trees over the brook, and up
the cliff, alighting just at the foot of the white waratah.

Then she heard the call of her mate.

Foolish bird that she was!

He was still down in the darkened jungle.

His morning could not have been so successful as hers, or he was
hungrier to start with, or perhaps he required more.

She opened her wings again.

Too late!

A rush through the air, like a streak of lightning or a shooting star!

Swish!

The hawk was down through the branchless space and upon the beautiful
wonga beneath the white waratah.

But she was heavier than he reckoned.

There was a struggle, and in it a whirl of feathers-white and grey and
green and golden-shimmered!

The hawk certainly rose, but he did not carry the wonga far.

The pigeon was torn, and her life was ebbing with the flow of her
blood. Her last struggle was her release, and from a height of a few
feet she wrenched herself free and fell upon the white waratah. Her
little claws grasped the colourless pistils.

The eagle above all espied the hawk, and he had then to fight another
battle in which he was the loser.

So the white waratah was stained with the blood of the wonga pigeon,
and the bird, still clinging to the reddened pistils, died.

Later, the white waratah threw out its clusters of follicles, and they
were streaked with red.

The seeds were streaked in the same way.

And all the plants that came from them bore flowers as red as waratahs
could be.

But they had to wait for three years to know that.

Not so the parent bush. Always afterwards its flowers were white, and
whenever the natives saw one such bloom they pricked their fingers and
allowed their blood to stain it.

Therefore there are not many white waratahs in New South Wales.



HOW THE SKY WAS LIFTED UP

According to the aborigines of Australia, the sky at one time in the
ages ago was not up high where it is now.

It was down so low that a man could not walk upright. Then, no living
thing stood erect. Everything either wriggled without legs at all, or
crawled like a lizard or a goanna (iguana).

The reason that snakes and grubs and such like still crawl, is that
the great event of lifting up the sky took place in the winter, and
the creeping things were then hibernating. Birds that can fly through
the air were most awake, and they followed the sky as it went up. In
fact, they clung to it, and it was because of their beauty that they
were allowed to sprout wings and soar back through the air. And they
did that because of their hunger. There was no food up there.

The air itself was that part of the sea that clung to the sky and in
falling was powdered, or vaporised, and still floats between the sea
and the sky. The wonder to us is that it was not blacks who roamed the
beaches and adjacent country that told the tale. It was the tribe that
lived on the Murrumbidgee.

A great chief had a very beautiful wife. Though we do not really know,
I am of opinion that her name must have been Krubi, for was not Krubi
always the name of the most beautiful woman?

And this wife was the most beautiful in her day.

Well, the time for a corroboree had drawn near. Growing young men had
not been initiated; that is, they had not been shown what to do in
social, industrial, hunting and warlike things.

The beautiful wife of the chief was the one who fixed just where the
women were to sit. She it was, too, who would give the signal when
they were to retire, and she also was to be on the alert to hear the
cry that meant they might come back.

No white man ever heard that cry. No white man ever saw a real
corroboree, unless by accident, or more likely, stealth, and perhaps
the aborigines were too finished in their bushcraft to allow that ever
to happen.

The greatest secrecy was preserved. The keenest watch was kept, and
all the whites ever saw was something of a mockery of a corroboree.
The dance, even though a ceremonial one, was a different matter.

No native races ever kept their most sacred customs more hidden, nor
were more cunning in disseminating false impressions of their real
desires and real beliefs, than the Australian aborigines.

Now the place selected by Krubi (we shall call her Krubi) was
condemned by the chief. He chided Krubi, and even threatened to cast
her off for making the mistake of choosing an unsuitable spot. Krubi
was piqued, and she retired to the gunyah, and there beat her breasts
in dudgeon.

But her husband was her lord and she had to obey.

He ordered her to go out again and find a proper site, though he took
care to indicate so pointedly as to practically tell her just where
the best place was. The other women of the tribe knew what was wrong,
and there were not wanting those who gloated over Krubi's
discomfiture. So when one or two would have accompanied her Krubi
waved them off.

She would go alone.

Now it chanced that another chief was not far away. He was a marauder,
and he was on the lookout for game belonging to the Murrumbidgee
people. Just as Krubi stepped upon a boulder in order to survey the
spot this stranger came from behind the tree that hid him.

He was a good-looking black.

He gave the sign that his intentions were friendly and he walked
swiftly towards the woman. He, she knew, was not "tabu." He was very
far removed in blood. It was the men of the tribe who would have
objected to his presence.

The women never concealed themselves from a member of another tribe.
But they were supposed to report his presence.

Krubi did not intend to do any such thing. She had been humiliated
before her other women. She was now out of tune with her husband. So
she spoke to the stranger and asked him from whence he came. He seemed
to not quite understand, so as a test of language he picked up a spray
of gum-flowers that had fallen from a tree.

"Mannen," he said.

Now that was just what Krubi called it. It was the flower of the
bloodwood or Eucalyptus corymbosa.

Then the man tried another.

He plucked a waratah and said, "Mewah."

The woman nodded.

Then said the man in his own rapid tongue: "I have come from far up on
the hills," and he pointed up; "and I have not seen your people. Where
are they?"

The woman, told him, and then she pointed to the creek just below.

"We shall go down there," she said.

So they went, and all the while the chief, who had gone into the
gunyah to await his wife, grew more and more sullen.

At last he rose and strode out. Everyone backed out of his way for he
had become very angry. He walked to the place he had indicated, and
stood on the very stone upon which Krubi had stood to survey the
place. He gazed all ways, and of course there was no sign of his wife.
He jumped high in the air, and came down crash on dry sticks and
leaves. Then he searched for the marks of his wife's feet. They were
there. In one spot a displaced leaf, in another a fresh-broken twig.
Even the flower of the bloodwood that had been handled he noticed, and
he knew it had been picked up and thrown down again. There were broken
umbels of the flower where it lay. There were broken stamens where it
had been picked up. The chief searched around, and at last his eye
lighted upon a little tuft of red fur. This was fur from the rock-
wallaby, and Krubi had no such rug.

Neither had any of her tribe.

Passing quickly on be came across a foot-mark in a patch of soft,
clear earth. It was the big imprint of a man's foot.

And there were, too, many broken twigs just around the fallen spray of
bloodwood blooms.

He uttered the cry of battle. All the men of the tribe seized their
war weapons and sped to him. Dogs barked, women screamed; children
were dumb with terror. This was a sudden call to war! No corroboree so
that the young men could be pressed into service! No preparation of
any kind!

The need must be urgent; the trespass stealthy.

The chief gave his orders, and the tribe, relieved to find that no
invasion in force had taken place, reassured the women and bade them
await their menfolk without anxiety. The chase had commenced.

Krubi and her newfound mate had gained a big start. Their tracks were
plain at first, but when they knew that they were followed they
employed the arts and all the craft of their fathers. They broke off
boughs and dragged them on their footprints. That was easily followed,
but when they sprang sideways over a ledge of rocks and down into the
stream, whether they crossed it or went up it or down it, was not
easily determined. As a matter of fact, they went not any of these
ways. They sank themselves in a pool and remained motionless, only
their noses being above the water.

But before doing this they picked up stones and threw them over the
other side, each one just a little beyond the other, so that the
leaves and twigs were disturbed just as they would have been had they
run there. It was some little while before any of the pursuers
discovered the trick, and by that time the two had swum under the
water and were at the far end of the hole.

And when we remember that the sky was so low that a man could not
stand upright, but was stooped as low as a wombat, and when we
visualise the bloodwood not more than a foot high which measurement
was its girth and not height as we know it, we can see that all
running, and all searching were infinitely more difficult than they
are now.

Besides that, it was near to dusk when it began. It was now almost
quite dark.

The pursuers gave it up. They knew very well that during the night the
fugitives would go far, while they had to return to the camp to see
their families; so they gave up all thought of ever catching Krubi or
finding out with what stranger she went.

Not so the chief. He was determined to find his wife, and he was no
less determined to punish the man.

Therefore, next day he chose one of his sons to act in his place, and
he set out to succeed or die. For many days he travelled, and luckily
he headed down the stream. Now and then he came across tracks that he
felt sure were theirs.

One day he bethought him of the spirits, so he kept a good lookout in
order not to miss any signs of the clay with which to draw the marks
of the mysticism. Also he killed a white wallaby and plucked off all
its fur. When he found the clay he drew the lines on his chest and
body and legs, and by sticking the white fur in the clay he was in the
proper dress. The Spirit came to him, and during the night he found
out what lay before him. He had to follow the creek until it joined
the river. Then he had to follow the river until it joined the great
sheet of water. That sheet was either the sea or a very great lake.
How far from the head waters of the Murrumbidgee the sheet of water
lay we cannot guess, but from the manner in which the tale was told it
seemed a very long way. It seemed to take longer than one man's life
to get there.

But the blacks believed that the Spirit prolonged the lives at least
of the three so that the wrong might be righted and the sky might be
lifted up.

So the day came when the chief saw the two he was following.

They were camped upon the edge of the lake. No bloodwood grew there,
but in the ages before other great trees had grown, only instead of
standing upright, they grew horizontally. They were still there. And
they were covered with age-long dried slime, showing that the water
must have submerged them. They were in hundreds, thousands, millions.
Lying about them and amongst them were great bones and great skulls,
but everything showed that never had any one walked upright. The
length of the bones of the arms showed that the animals had reached
out and had crawled, and the shape of the feet, too, was such that
they must have pushed themselves forward just as the ones written
about were doing.

The chief did not hurry. He reckoned that he had them both at his
mercy. There was plenty of food. Sweet roots abounded. Birds and
animals were there, and besides, the lake teemed with fish and with
molluscs.

The chief knew what was to be done. He chose a sharp stone and set to
work hollowing out one of the great logs.

At last it was finished. He pushed it into the water. His wife and the
other man saw him from where they lived, and guessing his intention to
follow them into the water, they tried to escape by running along the
shore and climbing in their stooped fashion over the logs. They soon
came to an oozy spot. They could go no further along the shore for
they sank deep and had hard work to get out, so they took to the
water. They could not see across, but they chanced their power to
reach the other side. Then the chief launched his log boat. He shoved
it with an oar, and he shoved it so hard that the water rushed over
the prow and filled it.

That he knew would not do. He would have to build something to prevent
that, so he placed a frame in front that reached up to the sky (which
was not high) and he wove twigs and rushes through and about it until
no water could get through.

Then he tried again.

But still the water got in. It rushed around the sides of his shield.
So he retraced his steps to where he had found the clay, and again he
marked his body with the mystic signs.

He found this time that he had to get a certain rod that lay somewhere
in the bottom of the lake. It surely was a rod made of gold, for the
blacks say that it was very bright and of the colour of gold.

He did not search far before he found it. He lifted it up, and,
behold! as it touched the sky, the sky went on and up before it.

And the rod grew. What a change took place then! Some water left the
main body and went up clinging to the sky. Birds that were accustomed
to hanging to what was before the heavens were loth to leave it and
they went up also.

'Possums clung for a little while and then let go. They to-day are the
flying opossums and flying squirrels. So the sky went on up as far as
the rod grew, and for as long as the chief pushed it. He was so awed
at what he was doing that he forgot his quest-forgot to build the
shield on the prow of the boat any higher, forgot that he only had
wanted to rescue his wife and punish the marauder, and return to his
tribe.

What became of the couple no one knows. Even what became of the chief
and the rod no one is sure of. Whether they all died, and the rod,
having done its work, sank back into the water, they can only guess
at. They say that perhaps he is still somewhere pushing up the sky,
and that it is when he grows tired and lets the rod down that the
clouds cover the ground and fogs hide the world.

Perhaps, they say, that is the sky, and it only changes its colour
from blue to white when it is again close to the ground.

Anyway, as soon as people found that they could stand upright they did
so, and trees grew high and better.

The birds fly through the air because they could not go on up with the
sky for want of food, and yet they do not wish to remain back on
earth.

That is the story of the lifting up of the sky as told by the tribe of
aborigines who inhabit a part of the head waters of the Murrumbidgee
River.



THE FIRST KANGAROO

(Two Stories)

According to the inhabitants of the South-Eastern parts of the
country-around the Monaro District, Mount Kosciusko, Goulburn, the
Currockbilly Ranges, Mittagong, Burragorang and as far north as the
Nepean River, there was a time when no kangaroos were in the land.

It is said by those people that the first kangaroo was borne to
Australia upon the greatest wind that ever blew.

That wind came from the plains. It swept around the Macdonnell Range
districts, whirling this way and that, careered back towards the
north-western regions, across probably somewhere over Perth and
Fremantle, swept over the Australian Bight, and finally blew out
somewhere in Tasman's Sea. During all this terrible wandering and
blowing the first kangaroo had a weary time.

He could not land. He was blown before that aimless wind and was
tossed up and down. In his endeavours to gain a foothold his hind legs
stretched out, and if they had not grown long as they did, he would
never have alighted except in the sea, where he would have been
drowned.

The chief was searching out new country. His tribe had cleaned out the
particular spot where they had rested for many months, and game had
become scarce. So the chief put on the paint that brought good luck,
and sallied out to find a new and prolific pasture. He had travelled
very many days without seeing a place any better, and was about to
return to his people. But the little native bee which gathered pollen
from the wattle just before him attracted his attention, and as he
watched it he saw it dive down to a pool that lay in the black soil at
the foot of the flowering tree. The black cautiously bent down, and
with that dexterity which he possessed in a remarkable degree, he
clasped, as he bent over the drinking insect, its wings between the
forefinger and thumb of his right hand. He carried the bee to where he
had noticed a hornet's nest, and detaching some of the cells of that,
he moistened the substance, and stuck a little of it on the bee's
back. Then he searched about for a cotton bush, and soon found one.
The pods were bursting and the white balls were ready to fall. He
stuck some cotton on the wax and released the bee. The strange feeling
and the strange load caused the little insect to make a "bee-line" for
home, and it was no trouble for the black to follow and keep it in
sight.

On and on he went, never looking down nor to the right nor to the
left, but always up, following the flight of the bee.

However, he was destined not to see the nest. Up in the sky something
arrested his sight, and at once he lost the bee.

Indeed, he forgot it.

The strangest mass of cloud he had ever seen was there. It was sepia
coloured with black edges. It seethed and curled and split. It
billowed and curled and broke-and frayed out. Long spirals of lighter
colour worked wonderful patterns against the brown, but drawing out
and contracting, waving like giant battle-plane streamers, now
straight as spears, now bent over like millions of boomerangs, now
detaching, then adhering; the awe-striking masses of vapour came On
from the west. Big rocks were tumbling there. Huge walls built up and
tottered over and tumbled and crashed. Giant forests were born and
waved in a giant storm and were felled. And with all that turmoil of
vapour up aloft, the earth below was calm and serene. It faced an
inevitable, and that inevitable was a catastrophe.

Suddenly it grew dark.

A night in the daytime descended in a second, blotting out everything.
But in the heavens a wondrous light appeared. Long streams of liquid
fire started from the south, and shot sheer across the heavens from
pole to pole. They waved from west to east. Red and yellow, purple and
brown, pink and grey, golden and black, white and pale green. All
these colours in long straight fingers stretched from pole to pole,
waved and crossed, and passed away towards the east. The unfortunate
black man had never seen such a sight.

But he had heard of it.

It seemed to him that perhaps once in a lifetime a man was privileged
to see such a thing. He cowered before it.

Then came the tornado. With the wind the lights waved out and the
clouds passed, and the night (for it was really night then) showed
starlight and clear.

But the wind roared on. Just above the trees a dull black shape passed
over. It had long legs that hung down and clawed. The claws were not
far above the black man's head. It was distinctly an animal. He could
see the body and the neck, the head, the ears and the eyes, but in a
few minutes it was gone.

Somewhere he seemed to know that it was food to eat. So he took heart.
He really believed it was sent by the great spirit, for he was painted
with the signs, and he was meat-hungry, and he was out, not on his own
behalf, but searching for food for his people.

So he lay down to sleep, believing that in the morning he would find
meat.

All night the wind blew. It was still blowing in the morning.

And he was so sure that it was to bring him some good thing that he
moved not a yard.

The bees were again in the wattles. But he watched for the other
creature.

It came.

It floated as before, being borne on the wind. The long legs still
dangled and clawed. The black man followed. It led him an awful trip,
but at last be saw it catch its claws in a tree-top and the wind
passed over it and it fell. But like a flash it was up on its feet,
and with great hops on those long legs it bounded through the bush and
was lost to sight.

The chief returned. He retraced his steps. There were bees and birds,
and there were many ferns which gave succulent roots. And seed-bearing
grasses abounded. So to there the tribe moved their camp and they
stayed for many a day. Now and then they sighted the new animal that
had made its legs grow long by endeavouring to grasp the earth, but it
was a very long time before it was speared. It must have caused a mate
to come from somewhere, because the speared one proved to be young and
others were seen. The flesh was good and the skin was covered with
very warm fur.

Years afterwards someone found out how to tan it. The red blood-like
kino of the bloodwood tree was soaked in water to dye the fur. A woman
had wanted it dyed. The skin was allowed to be immersed in this
coloured water for some days, and when it was removed not only was the
fur dyed red, but the skin itself was changed. It was more
serviceable. So ever afterwards those blacks soaked all their animal
skins in a solution of this gum, and thus they tanned them.

Everyone had seen the aerial wonder, and they believed their chief had
been answered by the Great Spirit and the kangaroo was sent from over
the seas to succour them.



THE SECOND KANGAROO STORY

Away in the Kowmung and around the rugged peaks under which lie the
great lodes containing the silver of Yarranderie, roamed a tribe of
blacks who have their own tale of the first kangaroo.

These people said that one day a woman hid from her husband. This man
was a very clever food-getter. His unerring boomerang brought down
every goanna. The boomerangs that he fashioned for playthings only,
would spin away out on their farthest boundary, and would return and
spin again and again above the head of the thrower before swiftly
landing at his feet, and that which he made as a weapon and, of
course, would not return, was always the heaviest and most deadly,
whether in hunting or in war.

He could deftly turn over the porcupine and could not miss a bird if
he tried to bring it down. Therefore the bag of his wife was always
filled with goanna tails, with great porcupines and birds and grubs,
though the wife herself got the grubs as well as the fern roots. The
grubs were the beautiful white ones that lie in interstices in old
logs and are called "nuttoo."

The first kangaroo was said to be a great beast and was not innocent
of eating small black children. Should a picaninny endeavour to crawl
away from its rug or its sheet of bark its mother always threatened it
with the calling of the giant kangaroo.

Now the heavily-laden wife one day rebelled. She threw away the heavy
bag and ran off. She was fleet of foot, too, for no one could catch
her.

Around that part of the country are many swampy patches, and these
patches are mostly densely wooded with the Melaleuca Maideni and were
similarly overgrown in the far-off days of the first kangaroo.

The fugitive wife hid behind the trunk of one of the biggest of these
trees. Its bark is white, and in broad patches, soft and paper-like
and irregular. It will peel off in huge scales.

Her husband often ran close to her, and she had to be very, very quick
in her darting from the cover, and racing on.

Days went by and still she was not caught. But she was growing tired,
and she began to think that carrying a heavy bag of tainted flesh was
not so terrible a task as that of playing the grim game of hide and
seek for life, in which she was obliged now to indulge continually.

Had she not been one of the women who had learned secrets that were
supposed only to be possessed by the men, she would never have dared
to rebel. If things came to the worst she could invoke the aid of the
spirit, and something would happen in her favour. She knew where the
necessary clay was to be found. The only trouble was that she was
unaware of the whereabouts of her people. However, she chanced
everything, and scaling the precipitous side of the mount she saw the
smoke from the camp fire.

She was overjoyed to perceive that it was away towards the mountain
now called "Werong," whereas when she escaped it was under "Alum
Rocks." And between her and Alum Rocks was a deposit of red, and
yellow, and white pipeclay. Thither she went, and soon she was
correctly marked, and she even stuck the wild cotton in the lines of
the clay to make sure that she would get the aid she needed.

By that time it was night, and she slept.

In the morning food came to her. The nuttoo grub poked its head from
the trunk of the grass tree, and she had no difficulty in drawing him
right out; and, roasted, he was very sweet. The taste of the nuttoo
made her long for the grub that may nearly always be found in wattles.

It is well known that a very large number of very destructive insects
inhabit wattles. The coolibah, too, is another host for pest grubs.
And wattle and coolibabs grew in plenty, therefore in less than two
hours she had collected a bagful, and then she sought a place to make
another fire.

This fire was her undoing. The smoke was observed by her husband. He
had never ceased to watch and to search for her.

With all his cunning he approached the little blue curling threads.

The woman was by no means unmindful. Her ears were alert, and
distinctly she detected the distant crack of the broken twig, and the
rustle o' disturbed dead leaves. The woman called upon the spirit,
beating her breasts the while. Between her and the stealthily creeping
man was a tea-tree stump. The top had been torn out by a gale and lay
dead on the ground. She crept to it, and straightening up she clasped
her arms around it, beseeching the spirit at the same time to protect
and guide her.

The tea-tree stump became animated. It pulsed with life. It had almost
parted from its roots before, for it was long since the branched top
had been wrenched from it.

The man saw it quite plainly. It was only a tea-tree stump. The great
flakes of bark were quite plain to him.

Therefore he did not watch it particularly. On he came until he could
see the smouldering fire, and his nostrils told him of the cooking
meal. There was no sign of his wife.

Well, he thought, never mind, this time. He would eat her meal and
then he would spy out her tracks and follow her.

He passed within a few yards of the tea-tree stump, and just as he was
quite off his guard and was about to begin the meal, the stump bounded
off. He threw a glance up to it. Surprise held him paralysed. There,
clinging to the stump as it went, was his wife.

He caught a glimpse of the white lines of the sign, and he gave up the
idea of following.

Therefore ever since that time it is hard to tell a kangaroo from a
stump. As he stands still in the bush one can easily imagine the black
woman, plastered with clay and wild cotton, on his back. The dark
forepaws of the kangaroo are her arms. His dark back is her body. His
dark head is her face. But his white shaggy front is the ti-tree
stump.

His one fault is his desire for black babies, and that was born of the
woman who caused his being. Some believed that he ate them, but others
deny that, and so they say it will never be known.

Even if not believed, the black mothers frightened their children by
saying that he did.



THE STRUGGLE FOR SUPREMACY BETWEEN BIRDS AND ANIMALS.

There was a time when Australian animals and Australian birds-the
fauna and the avifauna-lived in the greatest harmony, and the thought
of vieing one with the other to prove which was the stronger never
entered their heads.

But a chief arose amongst the aborigines of the Megalong Valley who
always set some one at variance with his neighbours, and, though he
never went into battle himself, he caused many a war and much
bloodshed. At last a time came when his people refused to quarrel at
his behest.

The chief had one great gift. He could make friends with the animals
and the birds just as easily as he could cause enmity between the
people. He had one beautiful bird that was his especial joy. He taught
it to mimic every other specimen of avifauna, and nearly every sound
made by everything else. At that time all the other birds just sang or
whistled softly, and the only animals other than the native dogs
(which are not really Australian, any more than descendants of Irish,
English or Scots can be) that made any cry at all were the native
cats. The big tiger cats made a dreadful cry, the little spotted
native cat miau-ed only; other animals simply murmured. The woolly
native bear made no noise at all, and the cry he has now they say, is
not his own, but is in imitation of something else.

One day a big tiger cat heard a cry. He took it to be the call of
another cat. He answered it and strode through the scrub in search of
the relation who uttered it. The sound seemed to come from directly
ahead, but when the cat had searched the spot he was amazed and
angered to find that the call of what he supposed to be a mate was
behind him. Many times he went back and then forward, but all he could
see was the chief of the black men and the chief's favourite bird.

He was afraid of that chief. He had many times seen the quarrels and
fights amongst the people who were spurred by him to kill one another.

During the searching the big striped cat met a wallaby. He told the
wallaby of his dilemma. That animal had met the same thing. His soft
murmuring and his occasional heavy grunt had been answered, but all he
could find when he searched was the man and his brown bird with the
perky head and sharp black eyes, and the wonderful tail.

Then the cat swore vengeance. He said he would follow the bird day and
night, and one time or another he would kill it and eat it up.

So the cat fixed his attention on the man and his bird. He very soon
found out that the man had taught the bird to mock all the sounds of
the bush, and nothing delighted both of them more than to watch the
fruitless searching of those they deceived.

One day he sprang upon the mocking-bird, and its struggles did not
last long.

The black chief did not mind at all. He waved his arms gently, and
purred and called in a strange way. His feathered friends came round
him. He threw a nullah at the cat and killed it. He lifted up the
clawed and torn mocking-bird and then showed anger, and the other
birds became angry too. A pretty little native bear reared up its
sleepy head to see what all the fuss was about, and shaking the
youngster that clung to her back so that he might take a firmer hold,
she slid to the ground. Another cat sprang upon the native bear
(koala). The koala was terrified, and it was then that she first
cried, for she had heard human beings cry when they were very
frightened.

Up high in the branches of a tree sat a greenish bird. He had often
heard the mocking-bird giving the calls and the sounds of the bush,
and he tried to do it. He imitated the cat splendidly. In the cat's
own voice he called it many terrible names, hiding the while behind a
limb or crouching unseen in a deep fork. (The cat-bird now calls like
a cat and hides behind a limb.) The vulture-crowned leather-head
jabbered without ceasing and the chattering of that bird now is the
remnant of the jabbering of that day.

A big brown and white bird-the kookaburra sat stolidly until he heard
the cat-bird, and then he found that he could really be highly amused.
His feelings found vent, and in the most wonderful way he laughed and
laughed and laughed again. He enjoyed hearing the cat-bird calling
just like a cat.

The kookaburra started the black and the white cockatoos. They
screamed. They had never screamed before. They started the little
robins and wrens and tits and shrikes, indeed, every bird in the bush.
The clamour was awful.

The black chief who was responsible for all this hurled his spear.
This was a signal for the rest of his people. They were standing awed
or cowering in the thick scrub or behind rocks, but now they emerged
and flung weapons, at intervals retiring to the cover again.

A boomerang that was flung stuck fast in the bark of a turpentine
tree.

The din was added to when the birds attacked the animals. They had the
advantage of being able to fly, and the animals were being defeated,
but to their surprise they found that they could follow the birds by
climbing. Even snakes wound themselves about small trees and climbed
up.

Exhausted birds fell to the ground and were eaten by the sly cats that
stayed to pick up just such dainties.

Darkness fell. Flying foxes were hanging to the big turpentine and
they and the owls took but little notice of the disturbance until they
began to move as is their wont when the daylight was disappearing
before the blowing of the Big Man of the East. One big flying fox let
go his hold and sank, only to be held by the boomerang that was fast
in the bark. But that gave way and the huge bat, letting it go, spread
his great leathery wings and sailed swiftly westward after the set
sun.

While this struggling between the fauna and the avifauna was going on,
and the black men of the tribe and the women and the children cowered
again, more frightened than before, and the Bad Chief pretended to be
as ignorant as they, the big flying fox reached the sun, and sank into
it. A great shaft of light burst forth and returned to the earth. The
birds and animals were blinded. They scurried down into dark places.
So we have birds that can only see in the night. The sunlight blinds
them.

There still are some wallabies and snakes and other ground animals
that climb trees.

Also because a beautiful grey gang-gang was bitten by a cat and
escaped, allowing some of its blood to stain the top of its head, we
see the crimson crested gang-gang cockatoo. All other birds that
remained alive, though bitten and bleeding, have now some crimson or
pink feathers, such as the corella and the red head and others.
Flowers that were below the wounded things and received some drops of
their blood are tinged with red. The gang-gang fell into a great
Doryanthes, and it is one of the reddest flowers of the bush. Before
the bird died it crawled under a flowering burrawang. The seeds soaked
up the last drops of blood and they are very red to-day. Drops fell
upon the dainty epacris too, and upon the waratah. But there are other
stories to account for the reddening of both these flowers.

The blacks of the Burragorang had a very beautiful story of the
reddening of the waratah, and as they loved this bloom most of all,
they told it often.

It is those of Tuggerall Lakes who told the pretty legend of the
reddening of the epacris.



THE DIANELLA BERRY

We have given the rush with the pretty blue berries its name after the
Goddess of the Woods--Diana--the hunter's deity. And it is strange but
true that the aborigines had an idea much the same. They said that the
plant at one time in the alcheringa was the hair of a certain woman
who lived deep in the bush.

She had some sisters, however, and they lived sometimes in the forests
and sometimes in the air for their other home was in the great cumulus
clouds that lie lazily above the sea.

The one who lived in the bush only, had for a husband a mighty hunter
whose voice was so loud that when he spoke angrily every animal and
bird and even insect and reptile fled from that part of the country
and did not return for a very long, time.

The woman was always most grieved when she saw the animals that she
loved flying in fear, and one day when her husband had been especially
angry one little bird grew too tired to fly far and it came to her for
help. Her hair was at that time very luxuriant and she took the little
bird and hid it in it.

After that many birds found the same sanctuary under similar
circumstances and at last the number was so great that it was
impossible for them all to be hidden. One bird-the woodpecker-begged
to be allowed to leave and to try his luck by hiding under the loose
bark of a big tree. This place was not secure, and when the angry man
saw him there with part of his body showing, he threw his spear. It
missed, but was so close as to make the woodpecker hop sharply further
up. Another spear and then another were thrown, each one causing the
frightened bird to jump one more step upwards.

The man's anger waned; his arm grew tired: he lay down to sleep. The
bird flew to the woman and plucked one hair from her head. This he
hid, hoping that the next time that the big hunter was angry and
roared the hair would be enough to cover, not one woodpecker only, but
the whole woodpecker family.

It is noticed that woodpeckers to this day hop up and up the trunks of
trees and the blacks say that they are looking for a place to hide
from the wrath of a forest giant. They listen intently and strain
their ears to catch the sound of the roaring.

We know that the birds are simply looking for food, and some of us
believe that the aborigines know this quite well, only feigning to
think that it is for any other purpose. Perhaps they think the tale is
too pretty to lose.

Next time that the hunter was angry and threatening, the woodpecker
tried his plan. He flew to the place where he had hidden the strand of
hair, and he found that he could be covered with it by winding it
around himself until none was left hanging. Other birds saw the plan
and followed it.

The time came when the woman had but little hair left. But rain fell
where the hairs were put and warm sun shone on the places and the
hairs grew and flowers came upon them all and afterwards berries
formed.

It was no longer necessary for the birds and the animals to flee far
to escape the wrath of the husband of their benefactor.

They only had to quickly haste to one cluster of growing hairs and
snuggle down in amongst them and they were quite hidden.

But the day came when a jealous sister came down from the cumulus
cloud. She told the man and he declared that he would find every one
of those clusters and destroy them. The sister gave directions to the
rest of the family still up in the sky that they were to keep their
clouds away from the place so that no more rain could fall and the
hairs would no longer grow. She saw that the wife was now denuded of
hair and she wanted to please the husband and thought that no more
could ever be seen after those growing ones were destroyed.

But the berries had fallen and lay covered by the now dry soil. The
clusters of hairs did die, and the earth suffered from a great
drought.

Then the man grew more and more sullen and was more and more often
dreadfully angry. His wife had gone away from him. The birds had
hidden her and with their wings they protected her, and the cloud
sister lived in her place.

She no longer spoke to those still in the sky. They heard of her
treachery and they did not want to speak to her. They at last
determined to no longer heed her request to keep away from that place
and they came again and they brought the lightning and the thunder
with them. They poured their rain down upon the earth and every little
blue berry gave birth to another hair that took root and became a
plant.

The rain kept on longer than ever before and there was a great flood,
but not any of these hair rushes was destroyed. To-day they grow where
the ground is wettest, as well as in dryer