THE BURBUNG OR INITIATION CEREMONY. _ 115 
During the time that the other tribes are assembling, the local 
mob are busy preparing the ground, A suitable site is selected 
close to the camp, where a large ring called the biérbiing, about 
twenty-five yards in diameter, is marked out, and cleared of all 
timber and grass. The surface of this is levelled, and is surrounded 
by a wall’ about a foot high, composed partly of the loose earth 
scraped from within, and partly of soil scraped off the surface for 
several yards outside the ring. 
The Burbung ground described in the following pages has not 
been used for upwards of twenty years, and that is why I have 
chosen it, because all the works connected with it are on a more 
extensive scale than Burbung grounds of more recent times. It 
is situated between twenty-five and thirty chains easterly from 
the eastern boundary of Portion No. 11 of seventy-eight acres, in 
the Parish of Waddi, county of Boyd, New South Wales. 
The large ring, (bwrbwng) was about three hundred yards from 
the left bank of the Murrumbidgee River. Its boundary, which 
was composed ofa raised earthen embankment, is still distinguish- 
able, and measures twenty-five yards in one direction, by twenty- 
three yards in the other. In the southern wall of this circle an 
opening about three feet wide was left as an entrance, from which 
a pathway, called dharambil or mooroo, now grown over with grass, 
led away in a direction bearing 8. 5° W. for a distance of fifty-five 
and a-half chains,” to a cleared circular space called the Budtha 
Goonang or Goombo. This space was not surrounded by an 
embankment like the Burbung ring, but the loose soil scraped off 
its surface in levelling it formed a sort of boundary around it. 
Within this boundary were four heaps of earth about two 
feet high. These mounds. were oblong in shape, three of them 
1In one instance I saw a Burbung ring defined by a nick cut in the 
ground around its boundary. The nick or groove was three inches deep 
and four inches wide, cut out with tomahawks or sharp sticks.—Journ. — 
Anthrop. Inst., XXv., 299. 
2 The goombo was a little under seventeen chains from the Burbung — 
_ at Bulgeraga Creek,—Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xxv., 299.. 
