Collins says he saw the natives fishing with the hook and line in New South Wales. The women, he says, used the hook and liue. The lines were made of the bark of a small tree, and the hooks of the mother-of-pearl oyster, which they rubbed on a stone until it assumed the shape desired. "While fishing, the women sing. In their canoes they always carry a small fire laid upon sea-weed or sand, with which, when desirous of eating, they dress their meal."[1]
The hook, probably, travelled slowly southwards, along the eastern seaboard, and had not reached the Lower Murray at the time the whites settled there. Negative evidence on such a matter is not, however, of much value.
The fish-hooks figured in M. Péron's work (1800-1804) are exactly similar to those of Gippsland and Rockingham Bay; and I think it may be safely assumed that the invention of the shell-hook is native.[2]
Amongst the fish commonly taken by the blacks are the Murray cod (Oligorus Macquariensis), which is often three feet in length and very heavy; the bream (Chrysophrys Australis); the schnapper (Pagrus unicolor); the herring (Prototroctes marœna); the black-fish (Gadopsis marmoratus); the Murray cat-fish (Copidoglanis tandanus); the gudgeon or trout of colonists (Galaxias ocellatus and G. attenuatus); the eel (Anguilla Australis); the large conger eel (Conger Wilsoni); the flounder (Rhombosolea flesoides and Pleuronecties Victoriæ); the flat-head (Platycephalus Tasmanicus); the gar-fish (Hemiramphus intermedius); the whiting (Sillago maculata); the chimera (Callorhynchus antarcticus); the common skate (Raya Lemprieri); the sting-ray (Myliobates aquila); the dog-fish (Galeus canis and Mustela vulgaris); and the large shark (Odontaspis taurus).
Of the aquatic mammals may be mentioned the whale[3] (Physalus Grayi—McCoy), the species commonly stranded in Victoria, and eaten by the natives; and the porpoise (Delphinus fulvifasciatus); and of the marine carnivorous mammalia, the sea-leopard (Stenorhynchus leptonyx), and the eared seal, Otaria (Arctocephalus) lobatus.
- ↑ New South Wales, by Lieut.-Col. Collins, 1804.
- ↑ A fish-hook used by the natives of the Louisiade is figured and described in Macgillivray's Narrative of the Voyage of the Rattlesnake. It is seven inches in length, is made of some hard wood, and has an arm four and a half inches long, turning up at a sharp angle, and tipped with a slightly-curved barb of tortoise-shell, projecting horizontally inwards an inch and a half. It somewhat resembles the fish-hook of the New Zealanders.
- ↑ "A whale" says Grey, "is the greatest delicacy that a native can partake of, and whilst standing beside the giant frame of one of these monsters of the deep, he can only be compared to a mouse standing before a huge plum-cake; in either case the mass of the food compared to that of the consumer is enormous. . . . . . . . When a native proprietor of an estate in Australia finds a whale thrown ashore upon his property, his whole feelings undergo a sudden revulsion. Instead of being churlishly afraid of the slightest aggression on his property, his heart expands with benevolence, and he longs to see his friends about him; so he falls to work with his wives, and kindles large fires to give notice of the joyful event. This duty being performed, he rubs himself all over with the blubber, then anoints his favorite wives, and thus prepared, cuts his way through the blubber into the flesh or beef, the grain of which is about as firm as a goose-quill; of this, he selects the nicest morsels, and either broils them on the fire, or cooks them as kabobs, by cutting them into small pieces, and spitting them on a pointed stick. By-and-by, other natives come gaily trooping in from all quarters: by night they dance and sing, and by day they eat and sleep; and for days this revelry continues unchecked, until they at last fairly eat their way into the whale, and you
