Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/39

34 would not improve the flavour or appearance of the food. Before the heat in the clay nodules, and the bottom of the hole has become exhausted, the opossums are beautifully cooked, as perfectly so indeed as though the operation had teen performed in the most improved kitchen range extant.

When the cooking has been completed the covering is scraped off, and this debris, consisting of calcined clay, ashes, and burnt earth, becomes the nucleus of a black fellow's oven. This process being repeated at short intervals, over a series of years, perhaps indeed for centuries, results in the mounds, which are in reality blacks' ovens, although frequently termed (most improperly so) tumuli.

As long as the camp remains in one place, the same hole is used for baking their food in, and when it is understood that at least a barrowful of fresh clay is required every time the oven is heated to replace the unavoidable waste by crumbling, which is by no means inconsiderable, in consequence of the clay being used in an unwrought state, it will readily be seen how these mounds gradually, but surely increase. Bones, too, of the animals which they use for food, besides charcoal, etc., tend materially to hasten their growth.

As a general rule the natives do not erect their loondthals, on these cooking mounds. An exception to this exists, however, on the extensive reedy plains of the Lower Murray, which are annually inundated, and remain so for at least five months out of the twelve.

On these wide-spreading reed-beds the blackfellows' ovens are of a larger size, and more numerous, than they are in