Page:Dawson - Australian aborigines (1900).djvu/30



CHAPTER VIII.

DOMESTIC FURNITURE. Every woman carries on her back, outside her rug, a basket made of a tough kind of rush, occasionally ornamented with stitches of various kinds. They also carry in the same way a bag formed of the tough inner bark of the acacia tree. Failing to procure this bark, which is the best for the purpose, they use the inner bark of the messmate or of the stringy-bark tree. This is spun into cord and knitted with the fingers into the required shape. The capacity of these articles is from two to three gallons each, and in them are carried food, sticks and tinder for producing fire, gum for cement, shells, tools, charms, &c. The women also make a rougher kind of basket out of the common rush, which is used for cooking food in the ovens. Domestic utensils are limited in number; and, as the art of boiling food is not understood, the natives have no pottery or materials capable of resisting fire. Their cookery is consequently confined chiefly to roasting on embers or baking in holes in the ground; but as they consume great quantities of gum and manna dissolved together in hot water, a wooden vessel for that purpose is formed of the excrescence of a tree, which is hollowed out sufficiently large to contain a gallon or two of water. This vessel is placed near enough to the fire to dissolve the contents, but not to burn the wood. It is called 'yuuruum,' and must be valuable, from the difficulty of procuring a suitable knob of wood, and from the great labour of digging it hollow with a chisel made of the thigh bone of a kangaroo. Another vessel, named 'popæær yuu,' is used for carrying water, and is formed of a sheet of fresh acacia bark, about twenty inches long by twelve broad, bent double and sewed up at each side with kangaroo tail sinews, and the seams made water-tight with an excellent cement, composed of wattle gum and wood ashes, mixed in hot water. After the bucket is made it is hung up to dry, and the contraction of the inner bark causes the vessel to assume a circular shape, which it retains ever after. It is carried by means of a band of twisted wattle bark fixed across its mouth.