while the women and children must abide by the established rules; the common kangaroo-rat, however, they are all, without any distinction, allowed to eat. As a fixed prohibition, the wallaby, in the Parnkalla language called Yarridni, and the two species of bandicoot, Kurkulli and Yartini, dare not, on any account, be eaten by young lads or girls, as, according to their opinion, they would, with the latter, cause premature puberty, and, with regard to the former, give to the beard a brownish appearance, instead of its becoming a jet-black color, as it ought to do. . . . . . Lizards are considered the proper food for young girls whose puberty they wish to hasten on, and snakes for women to make them bear children."[1]
Grey, writing of the natives of West Australia, says that amongst the laws intended for the preservation of food there are the following:—"1. No vegetable production used by the natives as food should be plucked or gathered when bearing seed. 2. That certain classes of natives should not eat particular articles of food; this restriction being tantamount to game laws, which preserve certain choice and scarce articles of food from being so generally destroyed as those which are more abundant. . . . . . Independent of these laws, there are certain articles of food which they reject in one portion of the continent and which are eaten in another; and that this rejection does not arise from the noxious qualities of the article is plain, for it is sometimes not only of an innocent nature, but both palatable and nutritious. I may take, for example, the Unio, which the natives of South-West Australia will not eat, because, according to a tradition, a long time ago some natives ate them, and died through the agency of certain sorcerers who looked upon that shell-fish as their peculiar property."[2]
Bennett informs us that "in most tribes the young men might not eat the flesh of the young kangaroo, the bandicoot, or the opossum. Young girls were not allowed to take the young from the pouch or eat the flesh of the old wallaby. Married young women were not to eat emu's eggs, or the young of any animal. No female could eat fish caught in places where they spawn."[3]
According to the information I have received, the natives of Victoria never ate oysters; but this shell-fish is eaten by the blacks of the Bellingen River, in Queensland.[4] There are some kinds of food, however, which seem to be universally abhorred—as, for instance, the fat of swine. As a rule, the natives will not eat pork, or any kind of fat the nature and origin of which are not known to them. A correspondent of the Rev. Lorimer Fison's says that the natives of Fraser's Island (Great Sandy Island), Queensland, will not touch pork or pork fat; and the natives of Victoria also strongly object to this food. On one occasion an old native woman named "Elizabeth" came to my house, and, as usual, food was given her, and a basin full of tea. I was informed that Elizabeth would not drink the tea, and strongly objected to it. I went to her and asked her why she objected to the tea; and though her manner was usually
- ↑ Manners and Customs of the Australian Natives, in particular of the Port Lincoln District, p. 176.
- ↑ North-West and Western Australia, vol. II., p. 237.
- ↑ Australian Discovery and Colonization, p. 253.
- ↑ Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.
