ABORIGINAL NAVIGATION AND OTHER NOTES. 211 



ABORIGINAL NAVIGATION AND OTHER NOTES. 

 By R. H. Mathews, l.s. 



[Bead before the Royal Society of N.S. Wales, December 4, 1907.'] 



In this paper I have briefly touched upon the aboriginal 

 methods of navigation, for the purpose of showing that 

 practically the same kind of canoes and rafts is used 

 throughout Australia, which is suggestive of the unity and 

 common origin of the native race. 



Oanoes made from a single sheet of bark, generally 

 stripped from a bent tree, were used by the natives of every 

 part of Australia, with the exception of a portion of the 

 coast of Western Australia from Eucla to Albany and 

 onward about as far as Gladstone. One of my friends who 

 has been acquainted with the country between Perth and 

 Israelite Bay since 1844, states that he never knew or 

 heard of either canoes or rafts being used by the natives 

 between the points mentioned. Oanoes were never seen 

 among the natives of Tasmania, but rafts took their place. 

 The rafts were made of two or more logs of buoyant wood 

 lashed together with bark ropes or thongs of skin. 



Rafts were also in use on the north-west coast of Western 

 Australia, all the way from the mouth of the Gascoyne 

 River along the seaboard to Oambriclge Gulf, and on as far 

 as Port Darwin. The rafts used in Tasmania were prac- 

 tically of the same construction as those made at Port 

 Darwin and other parts of Australia. Oanoes made of one 

 sheet of bark were seen by Oapt. P. P. King at Port 

 Essington 1 — apparently just such a canoe as one might see 



1 'Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical Western Coast of Australia' 

 (London 1827) Vol. I, p. 90. 



