AUSTRALIAN DIVISIONAL SYSTEMS. 79 



the Yuipera and adjoining tribes at Mackay were divided into 

 two primary classes, each of which was subdivided into two others. 

 This will be better understood in tabular form : — * 



Primary Division Husband Wife Offspring 



„ T f Woongo Bunbia Gurgila 



Wootaroo <j Coobaroo Gurgila Bunbia 



v j Bunbia 2 Woongo Coobaroo 



Youngaroo j Gurgila Coobaroo Woongo 



The above four names, although differing somewhat in spelling 

 from those reported by Mr. Ridley, are manifestly the same. 



Mr. Bridgman was the first to observe that the tribe, although 

 divided into four sections, actually consisted of two groups, 

 Wootaroo and Youngaroo ; and that the children belong to their 

 mother's primary division, but to the other section of it. He 

 further states : — "An intelligent native now at Mackay, who has 

 been living with the Kamilaroi people, says the Kamilaroi system 

 is the same as that here." This was subsequently found to be 

 correct by Mr. Cyrus E. Doyle, one of Mr. A. W. Howitt's cor- 

 respondents, who reported the primary divisions of the Kamilaroi 

 as being Dilbi and Kupathin. 3 He had no doubt been informed 

 of the two groups of the Mackay tribe, published five years before. 

 The Rev. L. Fison, in 1880, and Mr. E. M. Curr in 1886, also 

 refer to Mr. Bridgman's researches. 



In 1883 a paper by Mr. Edward Palmer 4 was read before the 

 Anthropological Institute, London, containing the results of his 

 personal researches, in which he dealt, inter alia, with the divis- 

 ions of the tribes on the Flinders, Cloncurry, Mitchell, Kennedy 

 and other rivers in Northern Queensland. He showed that the 

 natives about Hughenden and the heads of the Flinders and Clon- 

 curry Rivers, and extending easterly from Tower Hill Creek 



1 Aborigines of Victoria, (1878), i., 90, 91. 



2 This word is written Bembia in Smyth's book, but it is evidently a 

 misreading of the MS., for we find that Mr. Bridgman spells the word 

 Bunbia in an article he contributed to Mr. Curr's work on the "Australian 

 Bace," Vol. in., p. 45. 



3 Journ. Anthrop. Inst., (1883) xin., 335. * Hid., xin., 302. 



