Early In The Morning, Late In The Evening, And Occasionally In The Night, This Work Is Conducted, With The Greatest Success, Though Many Are Caught Sometimes In The Day.

As many as fifty birds are taken in a single haul.

I have myself, with the aid of a native, caught thirty-three, and many more would have been got, but that the net was old, and the birds broke through it before they could be all killed. On other occasions, I have been out with the natives, where a party of five or six have procured from twenty to thirty ducks, on an average, daily, for many days successively. In these occupations the natives make use of a peculiar shrill whistle to frighten down the birds; it is produced by pulling out the under lip with the fore-finger and thumb, and pressing it together, whilst the tongue is placed against the groove, or hollow thus formed, and the breath strongly forced through. Whistling is also practised in a variety of other ways, and has peculiar sounds well known to the natives, which indicate the object of the call. It is used to call attention, to point out that game is near, to make each other aware of their respective positions in a wooded country, or to put another on his guard that an enemy is near, etc., etc.

Such is an outline of some of the kinds of food used by the natives, and the modes of procuring it as practised in various parts of Australia where I have been. There is an endless variety of other articles, and an infinite number of minute differences in the ways of procuring them, which it is unnecessary to enter upon in a work which professes to give only a general account of the Aborigines, their manners, habits, and customs, and not a full or complete history, which could only be compiled after the observation of many years devoted exclusively to so comprehensive a subject.

In the preparation and cooking of their food, and in the extent to which this is carried, there are almost as many differences as there are varieties of food. Having no vessels capable of resisting the action of fire, the natives are unacquainted with the simple process of boiling. Their culinary operations are therefore confined to broiling on the hot coals, baking in hot ashes, and roasting, or steaming in ovens. The native oven is made by digging a circular hole in the ground, of a size corresponding to the quantity of food to be cooked. It is then lined with stones in the bottom, and a strong fire made over them, so as to heat them thoroughly, and dry the hole. As soon as the stones are judged to be sufficiently hot, the fire is removed, and a few of the stones taken, and put inside the animal to be roasted if it be a large one. A few leaves, or a handful of grass, are then sprinkled over the stones in the bottom of the oven, on which the animal is deposited, generally whole, with hot stones, which had been kept for that purpose, laid upon the top of it. It is covered with grass, or leaves, and then thickly coated over with earth, which effectually prevents the heat from escaping. Bark is sometimes used to cover the meat, instead of grass or leaves, and is in some respects better adapted for that purpose, being less liable to let dirt into the oven. I have seen meat cooked by the natives in this manner, which, when taken out, looked as clean and nicely roasted as any I ever saw from the best managed kitchen.

If the oven is required for steaming food, a process principally applied to vegetables and some kinds of fruits, the fire is in the same way removed from the heated stones, but instead of putting on dry grass or leaves, wet grass or water weeds are spread over them. The vegetables tied up in small bundles are piled over this in the central part of the oven, wet grass being placed above them again, dry grass or weeds upon the wet, and earth over all. In putting the earth over the heap, the natives commence around the base, gradually filling it upwards. When about two-thirds covered up all round, they force a strong sharp-pointed stick in three or four different places through the whole mass of grass weeds and vegetables, to the bottom of the oven. Upon withdrawing the stick, water is poured through the holes thus made upon the hissing stones below, the top grass is hastily closed over the apertures and the whole pile as rapidly covered up as possible to keep in the steam. The gathering vegetable food, and in fact the cooking and preparing of food generally, devolves upon the women, except in the case of an emu or a kangaroo, or some of the larger and more valuable animals, when the men take this duty upon themselves.

In cooking vegetables, a single oven will suffice for three or four families, each woman receiving the same bundles of food when cooked, which she had put in. The smaller kinds of fish and shell-fish, birds and animals, frogs, turtle, eggs, reptiles, gums, etc., are usually broiled upon the embers. Roots, bark of trees, etc., are cooked in the hot ashes. Fungi are either eaten raw or are roasted. The white ant is always eaten raw. The larvae of insects and the leaves of plants are either eaten raw or in a cooked state. The larger animals, as the kangaroo, emu, native dog, etc. and the larger fishes, are usually roasted in the oven.

In preparing the food for the cooking process a variety of forms are observed. In most animals, as the opossum, wallabie, dog, kangaroo, etc. the the bones of the legs are invariably broken, and the fur is singed off; a small aperture is made in the belly, the entrails withdrawn, and the hole closed with a wooden skewer, to keep in the gravy whilst roasting.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 191 of 247
Words from 196367 to 197389 of 254601