THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM MAGAZINE. 



BLACKFELLOWS' PICTURES 



By CHARLES HEDLEY. 



The stories tliat we all want to hear 

 are the stories of how things grow ; 

 no repetition has ever dulled the 

 interest of those wonderful spring- 

 time stories of the seed, the plant and 

 the flower, or, of the nest, the egg and 

 the chick. 



As plants or animals grew from 

 small beginnings, so did Art. Master- 

 pieces of painting and of sculpture are 

 displayed in the modern Art Galleries, 

 but for their beginnings we must look 

 elsewhere. In France and England, 

 many caves have been found in which 

 the men of the stone age once lived. 

 Buried in rubbish on the floor of such 

 caverns are bits of horn and bone on 

 which those ancient hunters have 

 scratched, with surprising vigour, 

 sketches of the animals, some of them 

 now extinct, with which they lived. 

 Such primitive folk had the minds of 

 children in the bodies of grown men 

 and women. Their love for art or 

 music was no less sincere, because it 

 was inarticulate. With hands as sure 

 and eyes as keen as any, their pic- 

 tures are crude, because the artist 

 lacked perseverance and specialisation. 

 The mind of a savage is simple, pas- 

 sionate and changeable, his brain soon 

 wearies of continuous effort, and so he 

 disappeared becau.se he was pushed 

 out of the world by others who were 

 more purposeful and more persistent 

 in toil. 



A couple of hundred years ago the 

 people who lived where Sydney now 

 stands were just like those old cave 

 dwellers of Northern Europe. The 

 many sheltered inlets of Port Jackson 

 ])rovided a bounteous supply of fish, 

 oysters, whelks and cockles, and so 

 supported a numerous native popula- 

 tion. In this twentieth century it is 

 difficult to realise how recently and in 

 what numbers the blacks once existed 

 and how completely they have 

 vanished. 



Sacred grounds were set apart by 

 these blacks, on which ceremonies 

 were performed ; these might not ever 

 be seen by the uninitiated, which, of 

 course, included women and children. 

 Any luckless trespasser on these per- 

 formances would have been speared 

 to death at once. So that they could 

 not be overlooked, the blacks chose 

 the highest hill tops for their Bora 

 grounds, as they called the spots re- 

 served for their secret rites. Round 

 Sydney on high ground there fre- 

 quently occur level sheets of bare 

 rock, a fine-grained sandstone. Here 

 the native artist found scope for his 

 talents by carving pictures on slabs of 

 rock. Probably the tree trunks round 

 about were decorated also, but, if so, 

 the stone tablets have long outlasted 

 both the timber and the men who 

 wrought upon them. 



The Ancient hunters of Britain and France observed form with a keen eye. This cast which is from the 

 Austrahan Museum shows that the original piece of bone was deftly carved by a prehistoric French artist who 

 had developed his draughtsmanship to a much more reaHstic pitch than the Austrahan aborigines who Hved 



even in modern times. 



