The women gather sticks for the fires, and get water; and each and all find employment of some kind.
The proper arrangement of the miams is well understood. The Aborigines do not herd together promiscuously. There is order and method. If the whole of the tribe be present, the dwellings of those comprising the little village are divided into groups, each group being composed of six or more miams. Each miam is five or six yards distant from its neighbours, and the groups are at least twenty yards apart.
Mr. Thomas says that he was often struck with astonishment when, on approaching a large encampment occupied by several tribes, he observed how carefully they had grouped the miams. Most often he could see at once, from the position of any one group, from what part the natives had come. The groups were arranged indeed as if they had been set by compass. At a great encampment formed on a hill about three miles north-east of Melbourne there were assembled, more than thirty years ago, eight tribes—in all about eight hundred blacks—and they arranged their camps according to the following plan:—
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| (7) | (8) |
1. Loddon. 2. Campaspe. 3. Mouut Macedon. 4. Goulburn. 5. Yarra. 6. Bar-ra-bool. 7. Western Port. 8. Bun-yong (or Bun-ung-on) and Leigh.
At an ordinary encampment the miams are arranged in such a way as to admit of each having a separate fire, and the fires are so placed that the embers cannot ignite the leaves or branches or bark of the miams. Accidental fires are of rare occurrence; but sometimes in a sudden squall the lighted sticks are blown about, and cause the destruction of the frail dwellings.
In arranging the miams, care is taken to separate the young unmarried men from the unmarried females and the families, and it is not permitted to the young men to mix with the females. They are strict in preserving order amongst the young of both sexes, but it happens frequently that all their precautions are evaded. The young people find means of communicating with each other, and arrange for meetings, notwithstanding that their parents may have forbidden them to meet or to speak to each other. These stolen interviews are often the cause of quarrels.
When several tribes meet there are sometimes as many as one hundred and fifty or two hundred miams in a camp; and though each man has to supply his wants from the forest, where all is common property, there is seldom a dispute, and rarely is an angry word used.
As soon as the fires are kindled, all the game that has been collected during the day is produced and roasted; and a strong odour of singed wool and burning
