NORTH QURKNSLANI) EIIINOGKAPH Y — KOI'H. 6l 



33. Wiiiftt-skeins. — Th(^ liunuui-liair l)elt, or prefeiabl}' .skein, 

 found tliroui,fliout Nortli Queeiisland, except perliaps in the 

 extreme Peninsula, consists of a lon^ piece of dout)le-plaited hair 

 twine wound ronml and round the waist so as to form a thick 

 skein ; the resulting size may lie guaged from the fact that a 

 con)|)arativeiy small specimen when unravelled, was found to 

 measure a length of over twenty-six yards. One extremity of 

 the twine is often attached to a little wooden peg, which, by its 

 speedy recognition, enables the wearer to start unrolling all the 

 more readily. Such a hair-skein into which the knife, toma- 

 hawk, etc., is often stuck, may not be removed from the body 

 for weeks, perliaps months, at a time ; its very nature precludes 

 it from getting rotten through moisture. In the Boulia District 

 it is one of the ornaments allowed to be worn by both sexes 

 subsequent!}' to the first of the initiation ceremonies ; the men 

 usually dot) it continuously from this time forwards, but the 

 women onl}- at corrobborees and Other special occasions, though 

 not necessarily even then. In most of the other districts it is 

 the men only who are allowed to wear it, although in several 

 where it is known to have once been in vogue, it is now discarded 

 even by both sexes, e.g., on the Endeavour River where, in 

 Captain Cook's time"", the men are stated to have had " a string 

 of plaited human hair, about as thick as a thread of yarn, tied 

 round the waist." Local names : — PPT. wa-kula, KAL. wan- 

 niga, MIT. u-rodo, the Yaro-ingo of the Upper Georgina calling 

 it ai-tanja. On the Pennefather River, fibre-twine waist-skeins 

 are wound around the belly and arms of women only, by whom 

 they are perhaps more often used as mourning strings ; they are 

 very often coloured red, made of over-cast twine, and known 

 as tanga-a. 



34:. Waist-helts. — ""Among Waist-belts, i.e., bands, etc., 

 which are tixed in front or behind, there are one or two inter- 

 esting varieties. Fixation anteriorly however is comparatively 

 rare, the nnly example known to me being that of the Opossum- 

 (or kangaroo) twine waist-belt (KMI. aln-jo) of the Middle 

 Palmer and TuUy Rivers ; in the former, the ends are attached 

 in front by means of a knot passed through a loop, in the latter by 

 tying. On the Batavia River, an Opossum-string (NGG. ogwar- 



2?? Hawkesworth's Edition, 1773, p. 207. 



■^^ The Brishane Blacks wore waist-bands made of Opossum- and 

 Human-hair twine on the ordinary European fish-net pattern, tlires to 

 four inches wide and from six up lu nine feet long ; the Opossum ones 

 were worn at initiation by the Kipnas. and subsequently on any occasion, 

 the latter, netted by themselves, being used by the medicine-men 

 only ( T. Petrie). 



