224 VICTORIA. NEW SOUTH WALES. 



The Opossum always comes down head foremost, and find- 

 ing an ahiiost horizontal path to the ground ready made for it, 

 takes it at once, gets its head in the noose, falls oft and is hung. 

 The only precaution necessary, is to allow the animal room 

 enough to swing free so that it cannot catch hold of the trunk. 

 A trapper had lately been camping on this bit of bush, and 

 nearly all the large trees had their lean-to's remaining. 



To ascend to a hole in a tree to drive opossums out in the 

 daytime, a light sapling with convenient lateral branches is cut 

 down and placed against the tree, and forms a ready ladder. 



One of the most curious sights in the bush was that of the 

 ancient tracks of the Aborigines up the trees, which had been 

 climbed by them to obtain opossums or wild honey. These 

 tracks are the series of small notches made each by three blows 

 of the tomahawk, to admit the great toes, and thus act as a 

 ladder to the Black man. The tracks, which are to be seen 

 everywhere in Australia, lead to the most astonishing heights, 

 up bare perpendicular smooth-barked gum-trees. Knowing 

 bushmen can distinguish the ancient ones made by the stone 

 tomahawk before the Blacks obtained iron from the English. 

 Many are to be seen on old dead barkless tree-trunks, and now 

 that the Blacks are gone they remind one of fossil foot-prints 

 of extinct animals. 



Marvellous as this power of climbing with so little support 

 is, it can l)e done by ^\'hites, and I was assured in New South 

 ^^"ales, when on the Hawkesbury river, that there was a White 

 man in the neighbourhood who could beat any Black at this 

 sort of climbing, doing it in exactly the same way, and being 

 often employed by my informant in collecting wild honey for 

 him at so much a nest. In the same way there are said to be 

 Whites who can throw the boomerang better than any Blacks. 

 In fact, a White man, when he brings his superior faculties to 

 bear on the matter, can always beat a savage in his own field, 

 except perhaps at tracking. 



We looked up into all the trees for a native bear {Phascolarctos 

 cinerei/s), and saw tracks of Kangaroos, but not the animals 

 themselves. We stayed out only one night, and got back as we 

 arrived only at nightfall, after a protracted struggle with the 

 mud. The roads were mostly short cuts, and were what are 

 called "made, but not metalled." Making a road is simply 

 clearing of trees a line of ground of a certain breadth and 

 marking the bounds with a plough. In using such a road, 

 constant divergencies have to be successively made in order to 

 avoid deep mud and swampy bits, or occasionally fallen trees, 

 and the track gradually widens and straggles in the adjoining 

 bush. 



