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Updated: May 19, 2025
Round and round it eddied, a dust-devil dancing a dance of death. The watchers drew nearer to Beemunny, who was past heeding even the spirits of evil. The women in other camps clutched their children to them, but spoke no word. All was silent but the swirling leaves as the column gathered them.
In particular I should like to mention my indebtedness to Peter Hippi, king of the Noongahburrahs; and to Hippitha, Matah, Barahgurrie, and Beemunny. I have dedicated my booklet to Peter Hippi, in grateful recognition of his long and faithful service to myself and my husband, which has extended, with few intervals, over a period of twenty years.
No shrieking, just a wailing inexpressibly saddening to hear. I lay for some minutes not realising what the sound was, yet penetrated by its sorrow. Then came consciousness. It was from the blacks' camp, and must mean death. Beemunny, the oldest woman of the camp, who for weeks had been ill, must now be dead.
In olden times all would have been painted in full war paint, weapons in hand, to see the corpse. I was given permission to go to the funeral, old Bootha was to take me. I heard that Beemunny had died early in the night. Her daughter and nearest of kin had sat all night beside her body, with each a hand on it to guard her from the spirits.
Coming very close to me she half whispered: 'In three days I think it; old woman dead tell me when she dying that "'sposin" she can send 'em rain, she send 'im three days when her Yowee bulleerul spirit breath go long Oobi Oobi. Beemunny died on Wednesday night. On Saturday when we went to bed the skies were as cloudless as they had been for weeks.
Beemunny one day asked one of the younger women if I had ever heard what a lot of lovers she had had in her youth, what fights there had been over her, and all because of her beautiful hair. Poor old Beemunny! Something in my own woman nature went out to her in sympathy. She was old, she was ugly, her husband was dead, as were all men to her. Poor old Beemunny!
I asked her why they swept round the grave. She said, in case the dead person had been poisoned or killed by magic; and, indeed, so little do they allow the possibility of death from natural causes, they even said old Beemunny had been given poison in her honey by an old-time rejected lover.
Poor old Beemunny, who was blind and used to get her great-granddaughter, little Buggaloo, to lead her up to the tree outside my window, under whose shade she had spent so many hours, telling me legends of the golden age when man, birds, beasts, trees, and elements spoke a common language. But the day before I had been to the camp to hear how she was.
Finding the deathbed guarded, the boolee turned sharply from the camp and sped away down the road, dissolving on the poligonum flat in the distance. Yellen gave a sigh of relief. But now her fears were verified; Beemunny was dead. Poor old Beemunny! How the vanities of youth cling to one; how we are 'all sisters under the skin.
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