22 



ance and wealth of colour. Each mound consists of a collection 

 of wood-ashes, charcoal, and stones, and is of a depressed conical 

 shape. The diameter varies from a foot or two up to eighty, and 

 two feet high in the centre. The distribution of these ovens is 

 limited, being recorded only from Central and Western Victoria, 

 and across the IMurray into New South Wales as far as the 

 Lachlan. 



Cave-shelter, or Gihher-gunyali hearths are deposits, of ten in 

 the form of a talus, at the mouths and entrances of the semi- 

 caverns formed by overhanging ledges of rock, and are particu- 

 larly common throughout the Hawkesbury Country of New 

 South Wales, when contiguous to saltwater creeks or arms of the 

 sea. These slielters appear to have been continuously inhabited 

 for long series of years. The tali consist of stratified ashes, 

 burnt and unburnt shells, charcoal, and other debris, with here 

 and there a few stones. 



Lastly Mirrn-yong heaps are usually found contiguous to 

 rivers, lakes, or marshes, and in a sheltered situation. They con- 

 sist of oval, or at any rate, longer than broad dejDressed mounds, 

 often of considerable extent, as much as one hundred feet long, 

 made u]3 of soil, burnt clay, wood-ashes, charcoal, burnt fresh- 

 water shells, burnt and unburnt bones, tomahawks (whole or 

 fragmentary), chips of other rocks, and works of industry, such 

 as bone awls, bone nose-ornaments, and the less perishable articles 

 of aboriginal everyday use. Within these heaps the scattered 

 cooking places, composed of stone, occur, each site having l)een 

 used by generation after generation of blacks, and the entire 

 mass slowly heaped together, thus representing the work of a 

 long period of years. 



It is to this section that I believe the refuse heaps at the 

 North- West Bend are referable. 



Under the excellent guidance of Prof. R Tate, and with Mr. 

 H. Y. L. Brown, I was able to visit what remains of a large series 

 of cooking places near Morgan, on the north bank of the Murray, 

 about two miles east of the town. From the long continuation 

 of broken shelly matter, ashes, and rubbish around these "ovens," 

 the whole must have formed a midden of no mean dimensions 

 previous to its disintegration by the depasturing of sheep, and 

 other causes of a like nature. The escarpment of the river here 

 forms perpendicular cliffs, from sixty to eighty feet high, with 

 here and there a short, broken, and more or less precipitous gully 

 leading down to the water's edge. On the sides of such a gully, 

 and along the cliff top, at about the point mentioned, the surface 

 consists of a large quantity of broken and even comminuted 

 shell-fragments, mixed with dark carbonaceous matter and soil. 

 The deposit occupies a depression on the cliff top, the rising 



