Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/82

77 part of the business being always performed by the women.

When a duck-hunting expedition has been decided upon, all in the camp—men, women, and children—get in motion early in the morning, and start off to the lagoon which has been selected for the scene of their operations.

On their arrival at, or rather near the lagoon, the women make a sort of impromptu camp, where they remain with the children and prepare fires, to be in readiness to cook some of the game which are intended to be taken.

Four men (generally patriarchs in the tribe) go off with the net to the point of the lagoon where they purpose fixing it. It is stretched across the lagoon, and close enough to the water to prevent the ducks from escaping underneath. In the meantime the young active men of the tribe range themselves at regular intervals along both sides of the lagoon, and high up amongst the branches of the trees with which the margin is fringed, those in the trees having each a light disk of bark about seven or eight inches in diameter. When they are all properly settled, one who has been sent off for the purpose startles the ducks. As is natural with these birds, the moment they are put to flight they fly off along the lagoon, following its sinnosities pretty closely. Should it happen, however, as it occasionally does at those times, that they wish to leave the course of the lagoon for some other water in the vicinity, one of the natives in the trees nearest the flying birds whistles like a hawk, and hurls his disc of bark into the air. The ducks, hearing the whistle, look sharply about, and seeing the revolving disc, imagines it a hawk, consequently a simultaneous stoop is made down close to the surface of the water to escape their