Page:Tom Petrie's reminiscences of early Queensland.djvu/39

 OF EARLY QUEENSLAND. 15 now they are often miserable, diseased, degraded creatures. The whites have contaminated them. On the fourth day of this journey, about 4 o'clock, the party arrived near Mooloolah, at a creek with a scrub on it, and all hands fell to making fires for cooking purposes, etc., and they stripped some bark to make a hut ("ngudur") for their white friend to sleep in, some placing a "pikki" (vessel made from bark) of water ready to his hand, others bringing him yams and honey or anything he fancied to eat. He had a little flour and tea and sugar with him, which the blacks carried, but never touched, leaving them for him. They did not think it worth while making huts for themselves for one night, but just camped alongside the fire with opossum rug coverings. Arriving at the Blackall Range, the party made a halt at the first bon-yi tree they came to, and a blackfellow accom- panying them, who belonged to the district, climbed up the tree by means of a vine. When a native wishes to climb a tree that has no lower branches he cuts notches or steps in the trunk as he goes up, ascending with the help of a vine held round the stem. But my father's experience has been that the blacks would never by any chance cut a bon-yi, affirming that to do so would injure the tree, and they climbed with the vine alone, the rough surface of the tree helping them. This tree they came first upon was a good specimen, 100 feet high before a branch, and when the native climbing could reach a cone he pulled one and opened it with a toma- hawk to see if it was all right. (The others said if he did not do this the nuts would be empty and worthless, and Father noticed afterwards that the first cone was always examined before being thrown to the ground.) Then the man called out that all was well, and, throwing down the cone, he broke a branch, and with it poked and knocked off other cones. As they fell to the ground, the blacks assembled below would break them up, and, taking out the nuts, put them in their dilly-bags. Afterwards they went further on, and, camping, made fires to roast the nuts, of which they had a great feed — roasted they were very nice.