Volume 03 Item 03: Walter Edmund Roth Bulletin No. 13 Fighting Weapons, 1904-1906 - Page 46

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30. On the Middle Palmer River, the men's fighting pole (KMI. eln-ba-la) is made of "box-wood" (Eucalyptus resinifera, Smith) on the same pattern a nd used ofter the same methods as that of the North Western Districts.* At Princess Charl. [Charles] Bay the implement (KRA albé-ila, KWA. alKau-úra) is somewhat shorter.  In the Rockhampton area the women's fighting-pole (TAR. rang-Kwan) is about six ft [feet] long and used in the same three positions of defence as has already been recorded: the weapon which is made of 'brigalow' becomes progressively thicker from the proximal to the distal extremity, both being sharply pointed. 
31.In the Rockampton district, at the North-Rockhampton Yaamba-Road Camp, I obtained in 1898 a two-handed sword that had recently been made by an old relative of a Karumburra friend of mine.  The old man told me that in the days before the advent of the whites it used to be employed in the area extending from Yaamba towards Broadsound and made to strike either with its convex or concave edge  He called it a bi-teran, a term identical with that applied to the similar but much smaller pattern of Rockhampton ]nulla-nulla (Fig. 59). The straight line joining the two extremities of the particular specimen measured 46 inches while the greatest width of the blade, with equally convex sides was 31/2 inches: it was made of brigalow. Lumholtz figures one of these, and says it is usually covered with cross-bars of chalk.  The two-handed swords of the North West districts have already been described.
*Sect. 255 Ethnol. Studies [indecipherable] 18 since presented to the Queensland Museum, Brisbane. Ethnol. Studies [indecipherable]18 Sect. 245 
Lumholtz - Among Canibals, 1890, 332, 334 fig. on C.L. (Ed.)

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