Page:Australian Emigrant 1854.djvu/81

 being that the party should carry plenty of tea, sugar, flour and tobacco.

"Yes" said Benbo "me go—me take my wife too—strong fellow my wife—carry ebbery ting—good fellow dat—no gammon my wife." A few days afterwards the journey was commenced. The two white men were dressed a la bush, each carried a kangaroo skin knapsack, one compartment of which contained a clean shirt, a small bag of flour, some tea, sugar, and tobacco, and a tin cup and plate; in the other was ammunition and the few articles of a bush toilet, namely, soap, a towel, and brush. On the top of each knapsack was buckled a thick blanket. Their guns were slung or carried in the hand as best suited the convenience of the bearer.

Benbo carried with him his native weapons, consisting of boumerangs, waddy or heavy club, a stone tomahawk, some long spears, and an instrument by which they are thrown, called a womera. A kangaroo skin bag was thrown over his left shoulder which contained them all, with the exception of the spears. His body was enveloped in an opossum skin rug, each skin being wrought in such a manner as to leave the whole as supple as if it had been tanned. His lubra, or wife, who was a short woman about eighteen years of age, was also dressed in the same garb. She had a full bag similar to her husband's on her back, which emulated a marine store in the diversity of its contents: there were wooden utensils for water, tin pots, an old saucepan, a chisel, a large lump of gum, a store of flour, and other provision for herself and husband (genuine from the mart of Raymond and Co.), six miserable puppy dogs, a half roasted opossum, and many other smaller but equally miscellaneous chattels; a little black child about two years old (whom Benbo had been commissioned by some of his tribe to take to its friends, vaguely supposed to be some-