EG Pe nen ee Cee” her ae fa 
a lie ISR RE sigh So 
Lae na tee , 2 
THE OVEN-MOUNDS OF THE ABORIGINES IN VICTORIA. 51 
it is occasionally turned up yet in the district by the plough. 
Altogether, the numerous ovens on the Woodbourne Creek and in 
the neighbourhood, also the numerous traces of bark-stripping to 
supply material for pegging boards for stretching out opossum 
skins, also for erecting their temporary shelters, afford clear evidence 
that the locality now in question was a favourite haunt of the 
aborigines in former times. It remains only to be stated, in 
regard to the sites of the oven-mounds, that they are to be seen 
indiscriminately on the east and west side of a creek, hence there 
could not have been in this locality any prevailing superstition 
leading the aborigines to prefer either east side or west side for 
their cooking-ovens. 
STRUCTURE OF OVEN-MOUNDS—EXTERNAL. 
Let us now come to a closer scrutiny of the mound and its 
oven. The collection of ashes, charcoal, and stones may be 20 
or 30 feet in diameter, and 1 or 2 feet thick at the centre. But 
stone oven is usually slightly concave, or crater-like, with a central 
stone larger than those otherwise employed in the oven. Sucha 
central stone, or occasionally two, may be commonly seen in those 
ovens which have been formed with some regularity. Such central 
= 
collect in wet weather, as the writer oftened witnessed. 
Besides the ovens which gave evidence of some regularity of 
cen: re also 
b 
that, in course of time, the ashes of the different heaps have 
