Primary tabs
Transcription
7
6. In the Rockhampton District where I made my enquiries in 1897, the spears met with were of the simple (single-piece) acicular type, about 7 to 8 1/2 feet long, with the butt ending in a sharp abrupt point; any marked shortening than this was due in all probability to the weapon having been broken, and subsequently sharpened up again. The weapon was always thrown with the hand, no spear-throwers being known here as well as all up the coast-line certainly as far ^north^ as Townsville. ^ Its manufacture consists in cutting it out in its entirety from a 'wattle'-core or from an outer strip of 'brigalow' or 'rose-wood'.^ Sometimes and just previous to a fight, a barb or two, placed oppositely, might be fixed on with [turie?] and cement-substance at some considerable distance from the tip ^(Fig9). At Glenroy ^on the Upper Fitzroy River^ I sa a couple of spears manufactured within the previous two days by local blacks ( presumably Karun-burra) similar to the preceding, with a thickened girdle taking the position of the barb (Fig 10): but the Rockhampton (Tarumbal) Natives knew nothing of this substitution. Three spears in the possession of Mr. A . Cowie, of Rockhampton, were of interest, not only in that he himself had obtained them xxx from the blacks in the district under consideration some 18 or 20 years previously, but that the barbs were cut out of the wood en bloc. I made a careful enquiury from the older natives concerning any information about these weapons, which were all about 8ft 6 in. long,and learnt that they all passed under the name of mi-lo, the term for a barb, peg,etc, but that they had not been made for many-a-long- day, the necessary timber, owing to the white