38 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



one of these giant trees, fit nursery for imperial birds I 

 With annual additions, the nest has attained immense 

 proportions, and as years pass it will still further increase, 

 for blacks capable of climbing such a tree and disturbing 

 the occupants are few and far between. Great distinction 

 and pride, however, are the lot of the athlete who secures 

 the snowy down of the young birds to stick in tufts on his 

 dirty head with fat, gum or beeswax, for he will be the 

 admired of all admirers at the corrobboree. Vanity impels 

 human beings to extraordinary exertions, trials and risks, 

 and the black who desires to outshine his fellows, and who 

 has the essential of strength and length of limb, will make 

 a loop of lawyer vine round the tree, and with his body 

 within the loop begin the ascent. Having cut a notch 

 for the left great toe, he inclines his weight against the tree, 

 while he shifts the loop three feet or so upwards. Then he 

 leans backward against the loop, cuts a notch for his right 

 great toe, and so on until the nest is reached. There has 

 been but one ascent of this tree in modern times, and the 

 name of the black, " Spider," is still treasured, 



A heavy, slovenly-patched mantle of leafage, impervious 

 to sunlight, covers the Isle of Timana, creating a region of 

 perpetual dimness from western beach to eastern precipice, 

 where orchids cling and palms peer on rocks below. All the 

 vegetation is matted and interwoven, only the topmost 

 branches of the milkwood escaping from the clinging, 

 aspiring vines. Tradition asserts that not many years since 

 Timana was much favoured by nutmeg pigeons, now sparsely 

 represented ; but the varied honey-eater and a friar bird pos- 

 sessing a most mellow and fluty note, cockatoos and metallic 

 starlings are plentiful. Although there is no permanent fresh 

 water, the pencil-tailed rat leaves numerous tracks on the sand, 

 and scrub fowls keep the whole surface perpetually raked. 



From a mound adjacent to the beach a black boy 

 brought fifteen eggs as we picnicked on the beach, and 

 though some of them were nigh upon hatching, not one 

 was covered with white ants — which, an authority asserts, 

 particularly like crawling over the eggshells, so as to be 



