234 



Use of the Wedge by the Natives of the 

 Great Barrier Plain. 



By John Harris Browne. 



[Read October 4, 1898.] 



In the years 1844 and '5 the great plain west of the Barrier 

 Hano-eSj and extending northwards to the latitude of the Grey 

 Ranges, had on it large patches of the Acacia homolophylla, the 

 Brigalow of Western Queensland. These patches were often 

 many square miles in area. The trees were from 8 to I'J feet in 

 the stem, 5 to 8 inches in diameter, and sufficiently wide apart 

 to enable a man to ride amongst them easily, although at a dis- 

 tance they appeared to form a thick impervious scrub. They 

 were of great value to the natives. First, their seeds were an 

 important article of food. For this purpose, when the seeds were 

 nearly ripe, branches were torn ofi' the trees and piled up in heaps 

 on patches of bare ground, and when quite dry were thrashed 

 with sticks. The seeds were then collected, winnowed on a rug, 

 o^round between two stones with water into a paste about the 

 cousistence of thick gruel, and eaten from the grinding-stone with 

 the bent forefinger, used as a spoon. Boomerangs and spears 

 were made from the wood. For a boomerang a branch with the 

 proper curve was selected, and an incision about an inch deep 

 was cut into it at each end of the proposed weapon. Then the 

 point of a yamstick or other piece of wedge-pointed wood that 

 had been hardened in the fire was driven under the cut wood at 

 the smaller end. A piece split off that required very little finish- 

 ino- to make it a perfect boomerang. Sometimes two or three 

 were made off the same branch by deepening the cuts after each 

 one had been split ofi. For spears a tree with a perfectly straight 

 stem 10 or 12 feet long was cut down, the top cut off, and then 

 split into halves and quarters by having wedge-shaped pieces of 

 wood driven into the small end. The trees split very readily. I 

 split a tree 10 feet long into halves with a single blow with an 

 axe struck on its smaller end. The spears made from the tree in 

 this manner were 9 to 10 feet long, from 1 J to 1 J inches in 

 diameter, chisel-pointed at one end, and with a blunt point at the 

 other. They were never thrown, but were held in both hands, 

 and used to thrust with in a charge. I believe they were peculiar 

 to that district, for I never saw any of them north of the Grey 

 Banofes. All the Acacia-trees seem to have died out, for when 

 ten years ago I looked down upon the great plain from the top of 

 Mount Robe, the only trees on it were a few pines and some 

 mallee in scattered clumps. 



