THE lUIRBUXG OF THE WIKADTHURl TRIBES. 



By R. H. MATHEWS, L.S. 



Assoc. Memh. Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris. 



[Read liff'firc tlw Rdijdl Sarit'ti/ of Qticoislaiul, 7th Aprd, lOOO.] 



A PAPER by me under the above heading, read before the 

 Anthropological Institute of Great Britain in 1895, was the first 

 description of the inaugural ceremonies of the Wiradthuri tribes.* 

 The following year I contributed a supplementary article 

 containing further and more complete details, i In the present 

 paper it is intended to give a short account of another meeting 

 of the aboriginal inhabitants, which took place in June, 1898. 



The general camp was erected about three miles farther 

 down the Bulgeraga Creek than the locality I visited and 

 described in my first article, and was on the right bank of that 

 creek. This place is situated on what is known as the " Mole 

 Country," on the Lower Macquarie River, Parish of Wullam- 

 gambone, County of Gregory, New South Wales. On one side 

 of the main encampment was the boorbiou/, an oval space, whose 

 diameters were 92 feet 8 inches, and 86 feet 5 inches respectively, 

 bounded by a nick cut in the soil about three inches deep and 

 four inches wide. 



From the interior of the space referred to, all grass, stones, 

 and timber had been removed, and the surface made level and 

 smooth. In the side of the oval farthest from the camp, about 

 four feet of the perimeter was left intact, for the purpose of 

 affording ingress and egress when using the enclosure on 

 ceremonial occasions, it not being permissible at such times to 

 step over the nick or groove cut in the ground. 



* Jouin. Anthrop. Ingt. (London), xxv., 295-318, Plates 25-27. 

 t Ibid., xxvi., 272-285. 



