Loo-errn.
(A Myth relating to the country lying between the River Yarra and the River La Trobe.)
The name of the country is Marr-ne-beek. The country belonged to one called Loo-errn. Loo-errn is to some an evil spirit, and to others a good spirit. Loo-errn had his house at Wamoom (Wilson's Promontory). If any one not belonging to his country passed through it without his consent, he died as soon as he arrived at the end of his journey; and if any one of a strange tribe, or any one of a tribe an unauthorized stranger might visit, gave such a native anything to eat or to drink, he too died. Loo-errn was
over the lake was not the least remarkable part of the phenomenon. The water was raised in a sheet or column, and carried all the way across its surface at a height which was averaged by the terror-stricken onlookers at 300 or 400 yards. After passing the lake, the storm kept its course over the stones which separate Condah from the Eumeralla. From our informant we learn that no damage so far as he could ascertain, save the destruction of the trees, had occurred, and that in a thickly-populated district it was wonderful that the houses escaped. The rate at which the storm travelled is estimated at twelve miles an hour, and in its direct course for about fifty yards wide nothing was left standing. Language can but imperfectly convey an idea of the noise and confusion and the terror inspired by this singular visitation."
I have seen the effects of a storm of this kind in the forests of the Western district. In a straight line some miles in length, and perhaps thirty or forty chains in width, huge trees were uprooted and torn limb from limb; and the stronger or better protected trees which had not been uprooted were stripped of their branches, and were standing naked and dead in a wilderness of broken boughs and withered shrubs. These giants, divested of their bark, bleached to a greyish-white, and standing far apart, were ghostly in their aspect when seen in the twilight. The Aborigines were no doubt strongly impressed with these phenomena when they were witnessed in past times and before the whites came amongst them with their more or less unintelligible explanations.
Since this note was written I have found the following account of a great storm in the Western district in the Hampden Guardian (5th July 1872):—"The storm that passed over the district early last Monday morning has left ample proof of its power in the neighbourhood of Terang. Within half a mile east of that township, on the Camperdown main road, the wind appears to have passed along in a regular hurricane. For some miles in length by about fifteen chains in breadth the trees and everything else that stood in the way have been swept down before the fury of the blast; and for the space that we have mentioned the telegraph poles were snapped off close to the ground like so many twigs—the wires of course disarranged and the insulators broken. Large gum-trees were torn up by the roots, or where they were so firmly planted in the ground as to offer resistance, were twisted round, and the tops of the trees screwed off and carried some distance away from the trunks. At one point a very substantial three-rail fence enclosing Mr. Niel Black's paddock was actually blown out, and the heavy rails carried by the sheer force of the hurricane several yards across the road. A four-roomed wooden house just caught the end of the whirlwind, and was turued round (so says our informant) several inches from the square, and the family were thrown out of bed, expecting that nothing but an earthquake was upon them. The storm seems to have come down by way of the south end of Lake Keilambete, and crossing the main road at the point mentioned, passed on down to Black's River in the direction of the Big Bend. For a time all communication by telegraph was stopped, but by Monday evening the line was again got into working order."
The extensive plains of the Western district, some eight thousand square miles in extent, and everywhere destitute of trees or shrubs, are no doubt the cause of the storms which so suddenly break over the adjacent districts. The atmosphere lying over these plains, which are exposed to the full power of the sun, must occasionally be subjected to changes of temperature sufficient to account for the whirlwinds and storms which devastate the forests on the margin of the plains. Whirlwinds are frequently mentioned in the Folk-lore of the Australian Tribes.
