Fhotogi 

 THE HAPPY NATIVE KANGAROO HUNTERS : QUEENSLAND 



B. W. Kilbum 



His success lies in an intimate knowledge 

 of the habits of animals on land, in the 

 ground, in trees, and under water, and 

 his wonderfully developed powers of ob- 

 servation. 



He decoys pelicans by imitating their 

 cries, catches ducks by diving below them, 

 locates an opossum in a tree by marks on 

 the bark or by the flight of mosquitoes, 

 finds snakes by observing the action of 

 birds, and follows a bee to its store of 

 honey. Any animal which leaves a track, 

 however dim, in sand, on rock, or in the 

 grass, falls an easy prey to the black- 

 fellow. Children are taught to track liz- 

 ards and snakes over bare rocks and to 

 find their absent mother by following 

 tracks too indistinct to serve as a guide 

 for an European. When a white man is 

 lost in the desert or a child strays from 

 home, the final resort is to secure a "black 

 tracker." 



When in search of game or enemies, 

 the native is armed with a stone hatchet, 

 a boomerang, and a stout club, all stuck 



in a belt made of cords spun from hair 

 or fur, and with a sheaf of selected spears 

 and a throwing stick carried in the hand. 

 The spear is the principal weapon — long 

 ones armed with stone or barbed wood 

 for war and shorter ones of reeds tipped 

 with hard wood, or still shorter-pointed 

 sticks for hunting. The effective range 

 of the spear is greatly increased by the 

 use of a wommera or spear-thrower. 



THE. INVENTOR OE THE BOOMERANG 



Clubs of all sorts are hurled at prey or 

 human enemies. The best-known form 

 is the boomerang, made of a curved piece 

 of heavy wood about 2 feet long and 2 

 inches wide. The well-known return 

 boomerang, round on one side, flat on the 

 other, and slightly twisted on its axis, is 

 used as a plaything or to hurl at flocks 

 of birds in the sky. The war and hunting 

 boomerangs are heavier ; they do not re- 

 turn to the thrower, but are deadly weap- 

 ons at ranges inside of about 400 feet. 



Faced with starvation, the native knows 



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