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[Page 166]
154
Very few Europeans have been allowed to witness the proceedings at the Bora. One who was permitted to be present, Mr. Thomas Honery, of the Upper Hunter, described the whole process to me. In the year 1862, Mr. Honery, then a boy, was present at a Bora, held between the Barwan and the Lower Castlereagh. There he found a place cleared and surrounded with bushes, laid as a fence, like a sheepyard. Within the enclosure were three old men. About twelve youths were waiting to be "made men." These youths had been seven or eight months under strict rule, eating only certain prescribed food, and partially secluded from social intercourse. When they came up to the scene of the Bora, they lay down flat upon their faces, and were covered with a cloak. Two of the old men then came outside, one remaining within.
Then the youths were called up, one at a time ; and each of them, when called leapt over the fence, and took up a piece of string with a bit of wood at the end, which he whirled round with a whizzing sound, three times. He then jumped out and another was called upon by the old men, and jumped in. While one was within the enclosure the other remained lying on the ground, covered with the cloak ; and as soon as one came out he fell on his face, and was covered up again. This preliminary ceremony ended, they were allowed to go about, but not to leave the neighbourhood, for a week. The old men kept a strict watch over them, to prevent their going off, or eating any forbiden [sic] food. At the end of the week they assembled again, and all the three old men went inside the enclosure, and again called in the youths one by one. As each came in one of the old men flogged him as hard as he could with a strip of bark two feet long and six or eight inches wide. Then, with two stones, one used as a peg the other as a hammer, they broke and knocked out one of his front teeth, leaving the roots of the tooth in his jaw. All this time the youth uttered not a sound. When it was over he went out and was covered with the cloak as before, while another was called in.
During the next four days they were allowed to walk about within a short distance, and to eat a very little bit of opossum, but nothing more. At the end of that time they were again brought, one by one, into the enclosure. There they were compelled to eat the most revolting food that it ever entered the mind of man to eat, or to offer to a fellow creature, - such as the prophet Ezekiel heard, in a vision, a command to eat (chapter 4, verse 12). The cruelty of this rule is somewhat tempered by mixing this nauseous food with "tao," (the root of a plant called by the colonists "pigwood"). Basins of bark are used for the mixture.
Mr. Honery is a man of unimpeached veracity, and his account was given with an explicitness that leaves no room to doubt of the fact. But it is only fair to mention that some of the Aborigines have vehemently protested that no such custom is practised in their tribes. On the reliable authority of honest old Billy Murri Bundar IJumera Gunaga,