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. 36
Kangaroo, bandicoot, black iguana, yellow iguana, emu, and pelican; the latter comprises water, and white or light coloured things and includes mud, cloud, rain, thunder, fresh and salt water, eels, wild duck, shark, alligator, water-snake, and all white timbers.
On the Tully River, the respective grouping is more certain. Thus, plants (wherein sex is not recognised) are divisible into four groups, containing special timbers as follows:
chalkai-gatcha ... Pencil Cedar, Moreton Bay Chestnut
chalkai-dir ... Contains a particular white wood. The sap of which is utilised for sticking feather-down on the body.
chalkai-chamara .... Silky Oak
chalkai-chiri .... Myrtle
Chalkai is the Mallanpara term for anything big and so old (and thus comes to be also applied to an old person). Grasses and small shrubs are not put into groups or divisions. Indeed, very little appears to be known concerning these groups, they being referred to nowadays only on particular occasions. For instance, in my presence in 1902, a man on the river-bank was talking to my host, Mr. Brooke, of a canoe passing down the stream which had been manufactured from the bank of a myrtle-tree that was portion of his real estate; he spoke of the vessel, not by the term Kukai (signifying a canoe) but expressed himself by saying “there goes my chalkai-chiri”. These same Tully River natives do not classify the animals like the plants into groups, but anything extra big, large etc, anything out of the common, with each kind of animal is spoken of by a different name. I have already recorded this in Bull[Bulletin].2 Sect[Section] 2. [Note].