ce about a foot long and three inches wide. The little log was
split open at one end, a wedge put in it, and the opening filled up
with dry grass broken up. This log was laid on the ground and firmly
held there; the fire-maker squatted in front, and with the flat piece
rubbed edgeways across the opening in the log. The sawdust fell quickly
into the opening. After about a minute and a half's rubbing a smoke
started out. After rubbing on a little longer the fire-maker took a
handful of dry grass, emptied the smoking sawdust and dry grass into
it, waved it about, and in three and a half minutes from starting the
process I have seen a blaze. Sometimes it has taken longer, but just
under five minutes is the longest time I have ever seen it take.

They use pine too, I believe, but whenever I timed them it was
Nummaybirah they were using.

The boys pick up the woodcraft of the tribes when they begin going out
with the men. As the boys began to grow up, when a good season came
round, and game and grass were plentiful, the old men were seen to draw
apart often and talk earnestly.

At length there came a night when was heard a whizzing, whirling boom
far in the scrub. As the first echo of it reached the camp, the women,
such as were still young enough to bear children, stopped their ears,
for should any such hear the Gurraymi, the women's name for the
Gayandi, or Boorah spirit's voice, that spirit will first make them
mad, then kill them.

The old women began to sing a Boorah song. To deaden the sound of the
dreaded voice, opossum rugs were thrown over the children, none of whom
must hear, unless they are boys old enough to be initiated; the sound
reveals the fact to such that the hour of their initiation is at hand.

The men all gathered together with the boys, except two old wirreenuns,
who earlier in the evening have seemingly quarrelled and gone away into
the scrub.

The men and boys in camp march up and down to some distance from the
camp. The old women keep on singing, and one man with a spear painted
red with a waywah fastened on top, walks up and down in the middle of
the crowd of men, holding the spear, with its emblematic belt of
manhood, aloft; as he does so, calling out the names of the bends of
the creek, beginning with the one nearest to which they are camped.
When he gets to the end of the names along that creek and comes to the
name of a big river, all the men join him in giving a loud crow like

'Wah! wah