Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the Years 1840-1: Sent By the Colonists of South Australia, with the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines and the State of Their Relations with Europeans — Volume 02Eyre, Edward John
History
Journals of Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia and Overland from Adelaide to King George's Sound in the Years 1840-1: Sent By the Colonists of South Australia, with the Sanction and Support of the Government: Including an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Aborigines and the State of Their Relations with Europeans — Volume 02
Eyre, Edward John
Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Ethnology -- Australia
Cray-fish of the small kind (u-kod-ko) weighing from four to six ounces
are obtained by the women wading into the water as already described, or
by men wading and using a large bow-net, called a "wharro," which is
dragged along by two or three of them close to the bottom where the water
is not too deep.
Frogs are dug out of the ground by the women, or caught in the marshes,
and used in every stage from the tadpole upwards.
Rats are also dug out of the ground, but they are procured in the
greatest numbers and with the utmost facility when the approach of the
floods in the river flats compels them to evacuate their domiciles. A
variety is procured among the scrubs under a singular pile or nest which
they make of sticks, in the shape of a hay-cock, three or four feet high
and many feet in circumference. A great many occupy the same pile and are
killed with sticks as they run out.
Snakes, lizards and other reptiles are procured among the rocks or in the
scrubs. Grubs are got out of the gum-tree into which they eat their way,
as also out of the roots of the mimosa, the leaves of the zamia, the
trunk of the xanthorra, and a variety of other plants and shrubs.
One particularly large white grub, and a great bon-bouche to the natives,
is procured out of the ground. It is about four inches long and half an
inch in thickness, and is obtained by attaching a thin narrow hook of
hard wood to the long, wiry shoots of the polygonum, and then pushing
this gently down the hole through which the grub has burrowed into the
earth until it is hooked. Grubs are procured at a depth of seven feet in
this way without the delay or trouble of digging.
Moths are procured as before described; or the larger varieties are
caught at nights whilst flying about.
Fungi are abundant, and of great variety. Some are obtained from the
surface of the ground, others below it, and others again from the trunks
and boughs of trees.
Roots of all kinds are procured by digging, one of the most important
being that of the flag or cooper's reed, which grows in marshes or
alluvial soils that are subject to periodical inundations. This is used
more or less at all seasons of the year, but is best after the floods
have retired and the tops have become decayed and been burnt off. The
root is roasted in hot ashes, and chewed, when it affords a nutritious
and pleasant farinaceous food.
The belillah is another important bulbous root, which also grows on lands
subject to floods. It is about the size of a walnut, of a hard and oily
nature, and is prepared by being roasted and pounded into a thin cake
between two stones. Immense tracts of country are covered with this plant
on the flats of the Murray, which in the distance look like the most
beautiful and luxuriant meadows. After the floods have retired I have
seen several hundreds of acres, with the stems of the plant six or seven
feet high, and growing so closely together as to render it very difficult
to penetrate far amongst them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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