wild blackfellows, then Pund-jel makes Myndie give them diseases, or kills them, as he thinks fit. Myndie is not quite like a snake. He has a large head, and when he hisses and ejects poison, his tongue appears, which has three points. Myndie inhabits a country named Lill-go-ner, which lies to the north-north-west of Melbourne—a long, long way from Melbourne. He lives near a mountain which is called Bu-ker-bun-nel,[1] and drinks only from one creek named Neel-cun-nun. The ground for a great distance around the place where Myndie lives is very hard; no rain can penetrate it. It is hard ground (Kul-ke-beek). No wood but Mullin can grow near it. The ground is covered with hard substances, small and white, like hail. Death or disease is given to blacks who venture near this ground. Myndie can extend or contract his dimensions when ordered by Pund-jel. Myndie can ascend the highest trees, and hold on to a branch like a ring-tail opossum, and stretch his body across a great forest a great length, so as to reach any tribe.
Myndie has several little creatures of his own kind, which he sends out from time to time to carry diseases and afflictions into tribes which have not acted well in war or in peace. These little ones are very troublesome, but their visits are not so much dreaded as the visits of Myndie himself, who is very large, very powerful, and from whom no one can escape. All plagues are caused by Myndie or his little ones. When Myndie is known to be in any district, all the blacks run for their lives. They stop not to seize their weapons or bags or rugs. They stop not to bury their dead. They set the bush on fire, and run as fast as they can. Some, as they run, are afflicted by Myndie, and become sick, and lie down, and some die. Some, when they are made sick, attempt to rise, but they fall down again. Those that run swiftly and escape are always quite well and never suffer from sickness. Mun-nie Brum-brum can arrest and put back the Myndie with a wave of his hand or a movement of his finger; but no one knows his secret. No one can arrest Myndie but Mun-nie Brum-brum.[2]
- ↑ Bu-ker-bun-nel, or Bukra-banyule, is a granitic mountain, situated about eighteen miles north-west of Wedderburn, and about twenty-four miles west of the Avoca River. It is but a small area of granite, and lies closely adjacent to the Murray Tertiaries which occupy the whole of the Mallee country. The Mullin in the text is probably but another name for the Mallee (Eucalyptus oleosa and E. dumosa). In describing this country, the Aborigines no doubt included the whole area occupied by them and their families, and that embraced plains called Kow. These plains are found in the sandy tracts of the north-west. They are clay-pans—dried-up basins of old lagoons or lakes—and on the surface of them are found crystals of sulphate of lime and broken and powdered gypsum and selenite. These fragments of sulphate of lime are "the hard substances, small and white, like hail." The nearest Kow is about twenty miles to the west of Bukra-bamjule.
Mr. Skene, the Surveyor-General, informs me that a tribe inhabiting the country near Pitfield, northward of Lake Korangamite, told him, many years ago, that Myndie had his abode in a water-hole near the town now known as Pitfield. The blacks at that time were very much afraid of Myndie, and when Mr. Skene proposed to pitch his camp near the water-hole, they fled, and prophesied disasters to him and his party, who had approached so near the favored abode of this dreadful serpent.
- ↑ A family named Mun-nie Brum-brum was the only one that ever set foot on the territory occupied by Myndie.
A sorcerer, celebrated as a man possessing great power, a very old black, and a member of the same tribe as that to which Mun-nie Brum-brum belonged, was a prisoner in the Melbourne gaol
