684 NGARRABUL AND OTHER ABORIGINAL TRIBES, II. 



finally settled at Wellingrove. His household consisted of a 

 half-caste wife and four three-quarter children, with two quarter- 

 caste step-children. His own youngest child was then about 5 

 years old. One of his daughters had a baby by a white father. 

 Perry's grandfather and grandmother, as well as his uncles, were 

 from Nymboi. He said that in the early days the tribes were 

 very populous, and that as a rule the New England tribes were 

 friendly with each other, but hostile to the Queensland and 

 Macleay River tribes, with whom they had many battles. At 

 Inverell I used to see an old North Queensland black tracker, 

 Bungaree. Steve O'Brien was an Inverell tribesman in the prime 

 of life. He had been a station hand at Callandoon in Queens- 

 land. He, with other Blacks from the inland plains, paid frequent 

 visits to Wellingrove. At Show time many natives of all ages 

 and both sexes would wander through Glen Innes from distant 

 parts of the State. At Oban-Kookabookra was a little band of 

 about eighteen. At Oban is a Government reserve for the 

 aboriginals, but this they rarely occupy, as some of their dead 

 are there buried. Dicky Nelson, the patriarch of them all — an 

 old man a quarter of a century ago — was a familiar figure 

 prospecting for precious metal in the bed of the creek, and thus 

 passing his declining days — alone. 



PLATE XXI. 



Map showing Distribution of Aboriginal Tribes in Northern New South 

 Wales and Southern Queensland. 



