126 RECORDS OF THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 



When in Brewairina, some of the residents told me that 

 nothing like " The Fisheries " existed elsewhere in a.nj part of 

 Australia. This, however, I knew to be incorrect, for similar 

 structures have been described, as well as " The Pislieries " at 

 Brewarriua, many times, in books, scientific proceedings, maga- 

 zines, and in newspapei's. Moreover, Mr. R. Etheridge, the 

 Curator, on my return, told me of a similar, but smaller 

 structure lower down the Darling, about thirty-two miles be- 

 low Louth, that he had visited in 1903, in company with Mr. 

 A. W. Mullen, Surveyor and Inspector to the Western Land 

 Board, Bourke. These fish-traps are at a point on the river, 

 between Newfoundland and Curranyalpa Stations. 



Fifty-one years ago, Mr. Gideon S. Lang, described these fish- 

 traps at Brewarrina in a lecture delivered by him at St. 

 George's Hall, Melbourne, on the 12th July, 1865, in aid of 

 the Leichhardt Search Fund,i where he states : — " The great 

 weir for catching fish, on the Upper Darling, called ' Bree- 

 warner,' is, both for conception and execution, one of the most 

 extraordinary works recorded of any savage tribe, and inde- 

 pendent of another described by Morrill, the shipwrecked 

 mariner, who passed seventeen years among them, is quite 

 sufficient to prove their capacity to construct works on a large 

 scale, and requiring coiiibined action. This weir, at ' Breewar- 

 ner,' is about sixty-five miles above the township of Bourke. 

 It is built at a rocky part of the river, from eighty to a hundred 

 yards in width, and extends about a hundred yards of the 

 river course. It forms one immense labyrinth of stone walls 

 about three or four feet high, forming cii-cles from two to four 

 feet in diameter, some opening into each other, forming very 

 crooked, but continuous passages, others having one entrance 

 only. In floods as much as twenty feet of water sweeps over 

 them, and carries away the tops of the walls ; the inner parts 

 of the walls, however, are so solidly built with large heavy 

 stones, which must have been brought from a considerable 

 distance, and with great combined labour, that they have stood 

 every flood from time immemorial. Every summer this 

 labyrinth is repaired, and the fish, in going up or down the 

 river, enter it, get confused in its mazes, and are caught by 

 the blacks by hand in immense quantities." 



J Laug — The Aborigines of Australia, 1865, pp. 19, 20. 



