The Australian aboriginal

by Herbert Basedow

The Adelaide and Encounter Bay tribes built wurleys or brushwood shelters over the mound to serve the spirit of the dead native as a resting place.

In the Mulluk Mulluk, when a man dies outside his own country, he is buried immediately. A circular space of ground is cleared, in the centre of which the grave is dug. After interment, the earth is thrown back into the hole and a mound raised, which is covered with sheets of paper-bark. The bark is kept in place by three or four flexible wands, stuck into the ground at their ends, but closely against the mound, transversely to its length. A number of flat stones are laid along the border of the grave and one or two upon the mound.

In the Northern Kimberleys of Western Australia, when an unauthorized trespasser is killed by the local tribes, the body is placed into a cavity scooped out of an anthill, and covered up. In a few hours, the termites rebuild the defective portion of the hill, and the presence of a corpse is not suspected by an avenging party, even though it be close on the heels of the murderers.

The Dieri, in the Lake Eyre district of central Australia, dispense with the mound, but in its place they lay a number of heavy saplings longitudinally across the grave. Their eastern neighbours, the Yantowannta, expand this method by piling up an exceptionally large mound, which they cover with a stout meshwork of stakes, branches, and brushwood lying closely against the earth ([Plate XXV], 1 and 2).

One of the most elaborate methods is that in vogue on Melville and Bathurst Islands. The ground immediately encompassing the grave is cleared, for a radius of half a chain or more, and quantities of clean soil thrown upon it to elevate the space as a whole. The surface is then sprinkled with ashes and shell debris. The mound stands in the centre of this space, and is surrounded by a number of artistically decorated posts of hard and heavy wood, or occasionally of a lighter fibrous variety resembling that of a palm. Each of the posts bears a distinctive design drawn in ochre upon it; several of the series in addition have the top end carved into simple or complicated knobs; occasionally a square hole is cut right through the post, about a foot from the top, leaving only a small, vertical strip of wood at each side to support the knob ([Fig. 14]). The designs are drawn in red, yellow, white, and black, and represent human, animal, emblematical, and nondescript forms.

The Larrekiya erect a sort of sign-post, at some distance from the grave, consisting of an upright pole, to the top of which a bundle of grass is fixed. A cross-piece is tied beneath the grass, which projects unequally at the sides and carries an additional bundle at each extremity. The structure resembles a scarecrow with outstretched arms, the longer of which has a small rod inserted into the bundle of grass to indicate the direction of the grave. Suspended from the other arm, a few feathers or light pieces of bark are allowed to sway in the wind and thus serve to attract the attention of any passers-by.

When the body is to be placed upon a platform, it is carried, at the conclusion of the preliminary mourning ceremonies, shoulder high by the bereaved relatives to the place previously prepared for the reception of the corpse. A couple of the men climb upon the platform and take charge of the body, which is handed to them by those remaining below. They carefully place it in position, and lay a few branches over it, after which they again descend to join the mourners. The platform is constructed of boughs and bark, which are spread between the forks of a tree or upon specially erected pillars of wood.

The Adelaide tribe used to tie the bodies of the dead into a sitting position, with the legs and arms drawn up closely against the chest, and in that position kept them in the scorching sun until the tissues were thoroughly dried around the skeleton; then the mummy was placed in the branches of a tree, usually a casuarina or a ti-tree. Along the reaches of the River Murray near its mouth, the mummification of the corpse was accelerated by placing it upon a platform and smoking it from a big fire, which was kept burning underneath; all orifices in the body were previously closed up. When the epidermis peeled off, the whole surface of the corpse was thickly bedaubed with a mixture of red ochre and grease, which had the consistency of an ordinary oil-paint. A similar mummification process is adopted by certain of the coastal tribes of north-eastern Queensland.

The Larrekiya, Wogait, and other northern tribes smear red ochre all over the surface of the corpse, prior to placing it aloft, in much the same manner as they do when going to battle. The mourners, moreover, rub some of the deceased’s fat over their bodies. When eventually all the soft parts have been removed from the skeleton by birds of prey, and by natural processes of decomposition, the relatives take the radius from the left arm, which they carry away with them. The remaining bones are collected and wrapped up in paperbark, and the parcel buried.