It is odd, in the face of the strenuous All-White Australian policy of to-day, to find that at one time—in South Australia, at least—there was an idea that all the difficulties between the blacks and whites could be settled by intermarriage—an idea even then, I should imagine, held only by the minority, though, unfortunately, they happened in this instance to be representatives of the Crown—and a regulation was actually passed by which any white man marrying a lubra got a grant of ten acres of otherwise free ground. Just about as much as a lubra could work, I suppose they thought. Nowadays marriage with the blacks is not even thought of—much less provided for—though any tampering with a black woman on the part of a white is regarded as a criminal offence, and is punishable by imprisonment; while the sooner all lubras in the Northern Territory are separated into strictly guarded native settlements, the better, judging from appalling medical reports which occasionally reach the public ear.
In Victoria nowadays the black fellows are few, and ravaged by the diseases which the white man has brought to them, and by smallpox and consumption. But in Queensland and the Northern Territory they are more numerous, more virile, and more like their old selves, and therefore it is to the people who have known them in these places that we must turn to satisfy any curiosity or human interest that we may feel; for humanity to Mrs. Æneas Gunn’s beautiful and sympathetic books, “The Little Black Princess” and “The Never, Never Land,” and for more exact and scientific knowledge to Professor Gregory’s book, “The Dead Heart of Australia,” among many others.
Nowadays one may live among the Victorian forests and never even see a black fellow, but the names that he has given mountain, district, and river still remain, like a mocking echo of his voice. The Barambogie, the Buckrabanyule, the Barramboot, the Bulla-Bulla, the Keil-warra, the Koorooyugh among the mountains; the Benambra Creek, the Marraboor, the Kororoit, the Kiewa, the Toonginbooka, and the Wonnangatta among the rivers; the Durdidwarrah, the Corangamite, the Koreetnung, and the Turang-moroke among the lakes, being a few of the soft-syllabled words which rise at random to my mind as I write, while from river bank, mountain, and forest, that the Black Fellow has thus christened, out of the tangled scrub and down from the tall gum-trees, peer the bright-eyed wistful Bush beasts, as if wondering why the world has so changed, leaving them there still unaltered, the very flotsam of time.
Even now, by good fortune, we may still come across the remains of some of the forest sanctuaries of the aborigines, breaking through the wall of forest trees which surrounds them, and stepping into their silent places with a sudden sense of intensest pity for a dying race, and awe and reverence for a life and faith of which we can have no true conception.
In some parts of Australia, more particularly in Northern Queensland, these are to be found, in the very heart of the Bush—surrounded by high walls, of dense forest growth—curious circular clearings, too completely denuded of undergrowth and too symmetrical in shape to be for one moment regarded as merely accidental. These are the ancient “bora,” or “corroboree,” grounds of the aborigines, formed, for the most part, long before Captain Cook—or any other white man—set foot in the continent, though to this day the remnants of the dying race meet there periodically to conduct their most important ceremonies and hold their most solemn parliaments—or, to use a more precise word, conclaves, for mere speech occupies a far more restrained and less important place in such meetings than it does in the political discussions of the whites. These clearings have been in existence for so long that even the very oldest among the aboriginals has never even heard of their beginnings; and though apparently they can always be easily located, no regular cut track is found to lead to them. To this day they are kept absolutely clear, save in an instance where all those people whose sanctuaries they represent have died out or been hopelessly scattered—and it is another example of the resourcefulness and industry of the black fellow—when any of his cherished beliefs are at stake—that he should have been able so successfully to grapple with all the quick-springing mass of undergrowth which leaps to life, almost in a night, in such places.
What mysterious ceremonies, what awful initiations, have been performed in these “bora” it needs an authority on such things to say. But surely there were never such sanctuaries apart from the sacred groves of Greece, never such temples built by hand, provocative at once of such peace and such reverence—silent, open places of the illimitable forests, carpeted over by the native grasses, which will only grow where the clear light of the sun can penetrate—fit emblem, indeed, of all the virtues.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.
NOTES.
[232] In Europe the density of the population, or number of persons to the square mile, is 112.58; in Australia it is 147.
[298] At the first colonization of Victoria, the number of blacks was estimated to amount to 15,000.