The Wallaroo and the Willy-wagtail: A Queensland Folk-Tale.
The following tale was collected by me from the aborigines near the Upper Condamine river in Queensland.[1]
An old wallaroo, who was too infirm to hunt, used to have his camp at the butt of a big tree growing on a rocky ridge. He had a habit of sitting and lashing the ground with his great tail. One day a padamelon, who belonged to the Dyerwine section, was passing near the place, and, hearing this beating upon the ground, shouted out "Ha-a!" and the wallaroo answered in the same way, but in a very plaintive tone, as if he were very sick. The padamelon came up to him, and enquired what was the matter, and the wallaroo replied that he was too ill to do any hunting himself, but that his mates had gone down to the river to catch some fish for him, as he was very hungry. The padamelon said,—"I'll go and find your friends, and try to bring you some food," and started off. When he got about twenty yards away, the wallaroo called after him,—"You had better take my boomerang with you in case you may see some game as you go along." The padamelon said,—"All right, throw it here," and stood where he was. This was the opportunity the wallaroo was watching for, so he threw the boomerang with all his force, and with good aim, and killed the padamelon. He then made a hole in the ground in which he roasted his game, and had a great feast, greasing himself from head to foot with the padamelon's kidney fat.
As the padamelon did not return to the camp of his own people in a day or two's time, one of his nephews, an iguana, said,—"I must go and see if I can find my uncle; something must have happened to him." So away he went, following his uncle's tracks, till by and by he heard heavy thumping on the ground, and on getting within speaking distance he called out the same as his uncle had done, and the wallaroo answered him in the same doleful accents that he had used to his first victim, and kept on beating his tail on the ground as if he were in great
- ↑ The wallaroo is a large mountain kangaroo, and the padamelon, or paddy-melon, is a small bush marsupial. The Dyerwine and Bunda are two of the four subclasses into which the local tribes are divided.
