140 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victorici. 



A. Morton, of Hobart, have re-asserted this similarity in the 

 case of the implements from the Murchison district of Westralia. 



The Western Australian implements, though rough, were 

 mounted in wooden handles, a device the Tasmanians apparently 

 did not know ; and the Western Australian aborigines who used 

 the roughly chipped stones, had other implements better than 

 those of Tasmania. The roughness of these unchipped Westralian 

 stones does not prove any direct affinity between their makers and 

 the Tasmanians. There is indeed no geological evidence of the 

 passage of the Tasmanian race across Victoria ; and certainly 

 the Buninyong bone gives none, for it is of a more advanced, 

 rather than of a simpler type of workmanship, and the 

 Tasmanians apparently did not use bone implements. 



Mathew^ has made the interesting suggestion that the stories 

 of Looern, the wild man of the Hoddle Range, north of Wilson's 

 Promontory, and of Wiwonderrer, the man-like animal, with a 

 body as hard as stone, who lived on the Bass Range, east of 

 Western Port, may be based on some of the last Tasmanian 

 survivors on the mainland. If so, then layers with imple- 

 ments, all of the roughly chipped Tasmanian type, should 

 be found in that district. But so far I know of none; on 

 the contrary, the implements I have seen from Wilson's Pro- 

 montory, and near Foster, are above the average workman- 

 ship of Victorian stone implements. Geological evidence so far 

 gives no positive evidence as to the route by which the 

 Tasmanians reached their island home. There is one area in 

 Victoria, the Gippsland Lakes estuary, which has formed by 

 subsidence at a comparatively recent date. That area might have 

 been occupied by a pre-aboriginal race, and the evidence all 

 buried. But even then we should have expected traces of these 

 people on the surrounding lands. 



X. — The Length of thk Human Occupation of Victoria. 



We have seen that the evidence of the aboriginal traditions 

 gives no certain support to the view that man witnessed any of 

 the volcanic eruptions in Victoria. Some of the traditions, more- 

 over, tell against this view, as they affirm that man entered Vic- 

 toria at a comparatively recent date. 



1 Mathew, J. : Eaglehawk and Crow, 1S99, p. 19. 



