Mr. Hodgkinson, in his work on "Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay," relates how "young men" are made at the Macleay and Nambucca Rivers.
He says:—
"As the boys of a tribe approach the age of puberty, a grand ceremony, to inaugurate them into the privileges of manhood, takes place. This ceremony is entirely different at the Macleay and Nambucca Rivers to what it probably is in other parts of the colony, for the natives there do not strike out the front tooth, as elsewhere. When a tribe has determined on initiating their youths into these rites, they send messengers to the surrounding tribes of blacks, to invite them to be present on the occasion. These messengers, or ambassadors, appear to be distinguished by having their head-bands colored with very pale yellow-ochre, instead of the usual deep-red, whilst their hair is drawn up and crowned by the high top-knots of grass, resembling nodding plumes, which ornament is, I think, peculiar to the blacks north of the Hunter—at least I have never seen it farther south, where the hair is usually matted with gum, and decorated with dogs' tails and teeth. After all the preliminaries are settled, and the surrounding tribes arrived, the blacks repair to the Cawarra ground. This is a circular plot about thirty feet in diameter, carefully levelled, weeded, and smoothed down. It is, in general, situated on the summit of some round-topped hill, and the surrounding trees are minutely tattooed and carved to such a considerable altitude that one cannot help feeling astonished at the labor bestowed upon this work. The women are now dismissed to the distance of two miles from the Cawarra ground; for if one of them should happen to witness or hear any portion of the ceremony, she would be immediately put to death. The first evening is passed in dancing the ordinary corrobboree, during which the invited blacks sit round their respective fires as spectators, whilst the boys who are to undergo the ceremony squat down in a body by themselves, and keep up a bright fire for the dancers. From the repugnance which the blacks at the Macleay displayed on my looking at their performance, and their angry refusal to allow me to see the main part of the ceremony, I am unable to give a regular account of it, having only been able to obtain occasional glimpses. After many preliminary grotesque mummeries have been performed, the doctors, or priests of the tribe, take each a boy, and hold him for some time with his head downwards near the fire. Afterwards, with great solemnity, they are invested with the opossum belt; and, at considerable intervals between each presentation, they are given the nulla-nulla, the boomerang, the spear, &c. Whilst these arms are being conferred upon them, the other natives perform a sham fight, and pretend to hunt the pademella, spear fish, and imitate various other occupations, in which the weapons, now presented to the youth, will be of service. As these ceremonies occupied a fortnight or more before they were concluded, many other ridiculous scenes were undoubtedly enacted, and during all this time the women did not dare to approach the performers. Each man was also provided with a singular instrument, formed of a piece of hollowed wood, fastened to a long piece of flax string; by whirling this rapidly round their heads, a loud, shrill noise was produced, and the blacks seemed to attach a great degree of mystic importance to the sound of this instrument; for they told me that if a woman heard it she
