Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/110

84 otherwise known) as a very powerful people, who could oblige them to attend wherever and whenever they desired."

He also says that the natives on the sea coast had little other support than fish, and men, women, and children were employed in procuring them, the men killing them with a fizgig, while the females used the hook and line. He says elsewhere that the wood natives had to climb trees after honey, or small animals such as the flying squirrel and opossum, and they also had a laborious method of snaring animals. In this he evidently refers to those local divisions of the tribes called by the Yuin Katungal and Paiendra.

Of the tribes, however, which inhabited the watersheds of the Hunter and Manning Rivers, and the coast between Port Hunter and the Broadwater River, I have been able to gather some particulars which may be supplemented by extracts from a but little known account of Port Stephens, written by Robert Dawson in the year 1830.

The tribe on the coast at Lake Macquarie was the Awabakal, whose language is recorded in the interesting treatises of the Rev. L. E. Threlkeld. Inland from the Awabakal was the Geawe-gal tribe, whose country was part of the valley of the Hunter River, extending to each lateral watershed, and from 20 to 30 miles along the valley on each side of Glendon. These aborigines spoke the language of, and intermarried with, those of Maitland, less frequently with those of the Paterson River, and rarely with those of Mussel Brook. They were always in dread of war with the Kamilaroi, who followed down the heads of the Hunter across from the Talbragar to the Nunmurra waters, and even occasionally made raids as far as Jerry's Plains. A section of the Kamilaroi occupied the upper waters flowing into the Hunter River, and those which form the heads of the Goulburn River, for instance the Munmurra Creek. The Dividing Range, between the Munmurra and the Talbragar,