All the above-mentioned types of spear are thrown by hand.
A straight, single-piece, hard-wood spear is made more effective by splicing a barb on to the point with kangaroo or emu sinew (d). The barb being directed away from the point, the spear cannot be withdrawn without forcibly tearing it through the flesh of the animal or man it has entered. The natives living along the Great Australian Bight, from Port Lincoln to King George Sound in Western Australia, used to make this the principal weapon; the spear was up to twelve feet in length, perfectly straight and smooth, and was thrown with a spear-thrower.
A rare and perhaps unique variety was found at Todmorden on the Alberga River in the possession of an Aluridja. It was a simple, one-piece, bladed spear, like that described of the Arltunga natives, but it had two wooden barbs tied against one and the same side of the blade with kangaroo sinew, one above the other, at distances of three and six inches, respectively, from the point.
The hard-wood spears may have the anterior end carved, on one or two sides, into a number of barbs of different shape and size. The simplest and most rudimentary forms were to be met with among the weapons of the practically extinct tribes of the lower reaches of the River Murray, including Lake Alexandria. The shaft was of mallee and by no means always straight and smooth; its anterior end, for a distance of from twelve to eighteen inches, had from five to six medium-sized, thorn-like barbs or spikes, which were directed backwards and cut out of the wood, on one or two sides. More rarely one would find spears with a three-sided serrature, consisting of something like two dozen small barbs, directed backwards, extending in three longitudinal lines over a distance of about fifteen inches; at the top the serrated lines merged into a single strong point. Vide [Fig. 5], e, f, and g.
PLATE XXIV
A “boned” Man, Minning tribe.
“He stands aghast, with his eyes staring at the treacherous pointer, and with his hands lifted as though to ward off the lethal medium....”
The most formidable weapons of this kind are those still in daily use as hunting and fighting spears on Melville and Bathurst Islands (h). The head of this type has many barbs carved on one side, and occasionally on two diametrically opposite sides. There are from ten to thirty barbs pointing backwards, behind which from four to eight short serrations project straight outwards, whilst beyond them again occasionally some six or more small barbs point forwards. The spears have a long, sharp, bladed point. The barbs are symmetrically carved, and each has sharp lateral edges which end in a point. The size of the barbs varies in different specimens. Many of the spears are longitudinally grooved or fluted, either for the whole length or at the head end only. Usually these weapons are becomingly decorated with ochre, and may have a collar of human hair-string wound tightly round the shaft at the base of the head.
Some of the heaviest of these spears are up to sixteen feet long, and would be more fitly described as lances.