and in many other parts of the colony, there are large numbers of old trees to be seen with notches in the bark, which the blacks have climbed for the purpose of catching opossums, or for getting bark. In West Australia the end of the wooden handle of the tomahawk is sharpened, and the native sticks the end into the bark after making a notch, and drags himself up.
This method of climbing by cutting notches is practised probably in all parts of the continent. Collins gives an account of it in his work on New South Wales (1804). He says:—"It has been remarked that these natives had longer arms and legs than those who lived about Sydney. This might proceed from their being compelled to climb the trees after honey and the small animals which resort to them, such as the flying squirrel and opossum, which they effect by cutting with their stone hatchets notches in the bark of the tree of a sufficient depth and size to receive the ball of the great toe. The first notch being cut, the toe is placed in it, and while the left arm embraces the tree, a second is cut at a convenient distance, to receive the other foot. By this method they ascend with astonishing quickness, always clinging with the left hand, and cutting with the right, resting the whole weight of the body on the ball of either foot. One of the gum-trees was observed by a party on an excursion, which was judged to be about one hundred and thirty feet in height, and which had been notched by the natives at least eighty feet."[1]
Mr. Le Souef says that the blacks at Twofold Bay often climb trees in the following manner. They make a rope of the fibre of some vegetable, and attach wooden handles to it, and ascend with ease even very tall smooth trunks.—(Fig. 15.)
FIG. 15.
The natives of Tasmania also climbed trees by the aid of a rope in the same way.
