A few other methods of catching fish are sometimes resorted to, such as stirring up the mud in stagnant ponds, and taking the fish when they come up almost choked to the surface. Groping with their hands or with boughs, etc. etc.
There is also a particular season of the year (about September), when in the larger rivers the fish become ill or diseased, and lie floating on the surface unable to descend, or drift down dead with the current. Fishes weighing nearly eighty pounds are sometimes taken in this way. The natives are always looking out for opportunities of procuring food so easily, and never hesitate to eat any fish, although they may have been dead for some time.
I have never seen the natives use hooks in fishing of their own manufacture, nor do I believe that they ever make any, though they are glad enough to get them from Europeans.
The large fresh-water lobster is sometimes procured by diving, in which case the females are generally employed, as the weather is cold, and night is the best time to procure them. It is extraordinary to see a party of women plunge into the water on a cold dark night, and swim and dive about amongst logs, stumps, roots, and weeds without ever hurting themselves, and seldom failing to obtai the object of their search.
Turtle are procured in the same way, but generally by the men, and in the day time.
Muscles of a very large kind are also got by diving. The women whose duty it is to collect these, go into the water with small nets (len-ko) hung round their necks, and diving to the bottom pick up as many as they can, put them into their bags, and rise to the surface for fresh air, repeating the operation until their bags have been filled. They have the power of remaining for a long time under the water, and when they rise to the surface for air, the head and sometimes the mouth only is exposed. A stranger suddenly coming to the river when they were all below, would be puzzled to make out what the black objects were, so frequently appearing and disappearing in the water.
Cray-fish of the small kind (u-kod-ko) weighing from four to six ounces are obtained by the women wading into the water as already described, or by men wading and using a large bow-net, called a "wharro," which is dragged along by two or three of them close to the bottom where the water is not too deep.
Frogs are dug out of the ground by the women, or caught in the marshes, and used in every stage from the tadpole upwards.
Rats are also dug out of the ground, but they are procured in the greatest numbers and with the utmost facility when the approach of the floods in the river flats compels them to evacuate their domiciles. A variety is procured among the scrubs under a singular pile or nest which they make of sticks, in the shape of a hay-cock, three or four feet high and many feet in circumference. A great many occupy the same pile and are killed with sticks as they run out.
Snakes, lizards and other reptiles are procured among the rocks or in the scrubs. Grubs are got out of the gum-tree into which they eat their way, as also out of the roots of the mimosa, the leaves of the zamia, the trunk of the xanthorra, and a variety of other plants and shrubs.