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The mother Bunbundoolooey put her child, a little boy Bunbundoolooey, who could only just crawl, into her goolay. Goolay is a sort of small netted hammock, slung by black women on their backs, in which they carry their babies and goods in general. Bunbundoolooey, the pigeon, put her goolay across her back, and started out hunting.
They would hear a woman's voice speak to them, see perhaps a goolay in mid-air and hear from it an invisible baby's cry; they would know then a Mayrah woman was there. Or a man would speak to them. Looking up they would see a belt with weapons in it, a forehead band too, perhaps, but no waist nor forehead, a water-vessel invisibly held: a man was there, an invisible Mayrah.
Just as they were gathering up their goods for a start, into the camp staggered Millindooloonubbah, the widow, crying, "You all left me, widow that I was, with my large family of children, to travel alone. How could the little feet of my children keep up to you? Can my back bear more than one goolay? Have I more than two arms and one back? Then how could I come swiftly with so many children?
She wanders through these forests and round the lake, the dead baby still in the goolay on her back, and sometimes her voice is heard mingling with the voices of the forest; and as the shadows fall, she may be seen flitting past, they say. Noorahgogo is a very handsome bronze and peacock-blue beetle, said to embody a spirit which always answers the cry of a Noongahburrah in the bush.
He is a black man who goes about with a goolay or net across his shoulders, into which he pops any children he can steal. Several waterholes are taboo as bathing-places. They are said to be haunted by Kurreah, which swallow their victims whole, or by Gowargay, the featherless emu, who sucks down in a whirlpool any one who dares to bathe in his holes.
A person who went to a Boodther without a goolay full of presents would be thought a very poor thing indeed. Of course every meeting has a corroboree as part of it. Every totem even has its own special corroboree and time for having it, as the Beewees, or iguanas, when the pine pollen is failing and the red dust-storms come.
When she had gone some distance she came to a clump of bunnia or wattle trees. At the foot of one of these she saw some large euloomarah or grubs, which were good to cat. She picked some up, and dug with her yam stick round the roots of the tree to get more. She went from tree to tree, getting grubs at every one. That she might gather them all, she put down her goolay, and hunted further round.
Soon in the excitement of her search, she forgot the goolay with the child in it, and wandered away. Further and further she went from the Dunnia clump, never once thinking of her poor birrahlee, or baby. On and still on she went, until at length she reached a far country. The birrablee woke up, and crawled out of the goolay.
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