Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/796

770 would never grow up to be a man. He lay down under that belief, so to say, and never got up again, dying within three weeks.

A game of ball-playing was a favourite pastime of the Victorian tribes, of which Wotjobaluk, Wurunjerri, and the Kurnai will serve as examples. The ball used by the former was made of strips of opossum pelt rolled tightly round a piece folded up and covered with another bit sewn tightly with sinews. The ball used by the Kurnai was the scrotum of an "old-man" kangaroo, stuffed tightly with grass. This was called Turta jiraua.

The Wurunjerri called their ball, which was like that of the Wotjobaluk, Mangurt. In playing this game the two sides were the two classes, two totems, or two localities. For instance, in a case which I remember in the Mukjarawaint tribe, the Garchukas (white cockatoos) and the Batyangal (pelicans) played against each other. But this was in fact the class Krokitch against Gamutch. The Kurnai played locality against locality, or clan against clan, their totems being merely survivals.

Each side had a leader, and the object was to keep the ball from the other side as long as possible, by throwing it from one to the other. Such a game might last for hours.

The Ngarigo played with a ball made of opossum pelt, and when many people were present the women and children took part in the game.

The Dieri obtained fire by drilling with a straight-pointed stick on the edge of the shield. The shields are obtained from the tribes to the eastward by barter. I do not know what the wood is of which they are made. It is light coloured and soft. I frequently saw shields with a row of small holes burned in the side edge by this process. The same remarks apply to the other tribes of the Barcoo delta.