Page:Tom Petrie's reminiscences of early Queensland.djvu/49

 OF EARLY QUEENSLAND. 23 while others made weapons preparing for the great fight which always came off at the finish. When a time for this was fixed, all would repair to an open piece of country and there would keep the fight going for a week or so Of the way this was managed I will speak another time. At the finish of the great fight the tribes would start off homewards, parting the very best of friends with each other, and carrying large supplies of bon-yi nuts with them. The blacks of the district sought out a damp and boggy place — soft mud and water, with perhaps a spring — and buried their nuts there, placed in dilly-bags. Then off they went to the coast, living there on fish and crabs for the space of a month, when they returned, and, digging up the nuts, had another feast, relishing them all the more no doubt because of the change to the seaside! The nuts when unearthed would have a disagreeable, musty smell, and would be all sprouting,but when roasted were improved greatly. The blacks from afar would also go to the coast if they had friends there who invited them, and they would be glad of a corrobboree that took them seawards, if only for the one reason that they might have a change of food. I omitted to mention that on the way to these feasts the blacks in those days would often catch emus in the vicinity of the Glass House Mountains, and also get their eggs. This my father knew from what was told him, though none were found when he accompanied them. The feathers the gins used to stick in their hair on state occasions. At any time when a certain tribe had learnt a new corrob- boree they would take the trouble to go even a long distance in order to pass it on. They first sent messengers — two men and their gins — to say they had learnt, or perhaps made, a fresh song and dance, and were coming to teach it. They would very likely stay a week and then go home again, or perhaps a number of tribes would all congregate. Father has seen about five hundred aborigines at a corrobboree on Petrie's Creek, and they came from all parts — some from the far interior. Some of them there had never seen a boat before, and made a great wonder of it, looking it over and examining it everywhere.