Sir Thomas Mitchell found many native ovens on the Murrumbidgee. "The common process of natives," says Sir Thomas "in dressing their provisions, is to lay the food between layers of heated stones; but here, where there are no stones, the calcined clay seems to answer the same purpose, and becomes the better or harder the more it is used. Hence the accumulation of heaps, resembling small hills. Some I observed so very ancient as to be surrounded by circles of lofty trees; others, long abandoned, were half worn away by the river, which, in the course of ages, had so far changed its bed that the burnt ashes reached out to mid-channel; others, now very remote from the river, had large trees growing out of them."[1]
Middens are found on the banks of nearly all the rivers and large lakes and marshes in Victoria, and on the sea-coast; but it does not appear that they occur in every part of the north. Mr. A. F. Sullivan informs me that he has never seen ovens or mounds, similar to those on the Murray, anywhere in Central Australia.
Shell-mounds, some covering large areas, are common on nearly all parts of the coast, and may be seen almost everywhere at those points where rocks are uncovered by the tide, and where it was easy for the natives to procure shell-fish. I have examined many of these mounds, and nearly all were remarkable for containing mostly the shells of the common mussel, with a less number of such shells as the mutton-fish, cockle, periwinkle, limpet, and oyster. Whether the latter was eaten or not, I cannot say. There is usually a great deal of charcoal mixed with the shells; and, in some cases, bones and implements are found in the heaps.
Mr. Murray collected, at the mouth of Coal Creek, near Cape Patterson, four chips of chert and two well-polished bone-awls from a shell-heap made up principally of shells of the mutton-fish, limpet, periwinkle, &c. The awls appear to be very old, and, judging from the appearance of the heap, it is probable that it is long since the spot was frequented by the blacks.
It is nearly impossible to ascertain, even approximately, the extent of some of the ancient shell-mounds. The mussel-shells, and many of the smaller fragments of the haliotis, &c., have been blown about by the winds, and the area covered by shells is consequently much larger than would have been the case if they had remained in the place where the natives ate the fish. Some of the mounds in Victoria—measuring only the thicker, unmoved parts—are many yards in diameter, and they must have been the resort of the natives during very long periods. Grey found, on a neck of land near the sea, between Port George the Fourth and Hanover Bay, in West Australia, "a complete hill of broken shells, which it must have taken some centuries to form, for it covered nearly, if not quite, half an acre of ground, and in some places was ten feet high. It was situated just over a bed of cockles, and was evidently formed from the remains of native feasts, as their fire-places and the last small heaps of shells were visible on the summit of the hill."[2] Grey refers in a note to a similar mass
