10 RECORDS OF THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 



9. Canoes made of two sheets of bark were seen on the Tully 

 River and are said to require a much longer time for their 

 manufacture. The keel is sewn first, the extremities only after 

 alternately repeated wetting and drying. Their raison detre is 

 apparently the want of a suitably sized sheet to allow of folding ; 

 they have no s|ieclal name to distinguish them from the ku-kai 

 already described. 



10. The three-sheet type of bark-canoe is to be seen at the 

 present day in use amongst the natives on Whitsunday and ad- 

 jacent islands (PI. v., fig. 2), though within the present genera- 

 tion its limits extended certainly as far south as the mouth of the 

 Fitzroy River, where the local Tarumbal Blacks made me some 

 models in 1894, by which time canoes of any description had 

 ceased to be in vogue. Cut into more or less of a diamond 



shape, one sheet forms 

 the bottom of the ves. 

 sel, the other two the 

 sides (fig. 9). On the 

 Fitzroy River the tim- 

 ber used was iron-bark, 

 '^' ■ though the bottom 



piece was some times replaced by blue gum, and the completed 

 vessel, from six tos^ven feet long, was known l)ythenameof winta, 

 koka or okka, and wallo. Mi. VV. T. Wyndham^, gives a short 

 description of such a canoe in the old days from Central Queens- 

 land, and told me that it was the same as what he saw subse- 

 quently on the coast-line: — "There is one kind of bark-canoe 

 they make in Central Queensland that I have assisted in making, 

 and do not recollect having seen in New South Wales. Tlie 

 builder cuts three sheets of bark into an oval form, he inserts 

 one sheet in a hollow in the ground, with the ends resting one 

 on each side of the hole, he then puts a log or some other weight 

 in the centre of the bark so as to cause the two ends to turn up, 

 fire often l)eing used to get them into the proper shape, the ends 

 are theti pared rather thin ; the peel of some fibrous root (gener- 

 ally from a species of ticus) is used as a thread to sew the bark 

 together ; the two pieces of bark are placed on their siiies, and 

 the bottom sewn on to them by using an awl, a roll of the paper 

 tea tree plant is used to caulk the cracks, two saplings are sewn 

 inside to stitlen the outer rim of the canoe all round, and the 

 okka is finished." The Whitsunday Island specimens usually 

 have stretchers to keep the two sides apart. On occasion I have 



* VVyndham— Jourii. Roy. Soo. N.8. Wales, xxiii., i, 1889, p. 40. 



