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Updated: July 5, 2025
This all over, once more there was a marching and chanting round the fire, then the boys were taken away and given food for the first time since they left their mothers. No wonder that the 'supernatural' was mixed up with their impressions of the Boorah: fasting nourishes hallucinations.
Where their blood was spilled two red-leaved trees have grown, and that place is still haunted by their spirits. Amid the Cookeran Lake still wanders the woman who arrived late at the big Boorah, having lost her children one by one on the track, arriving at last with only her dead baby in the net at her back. As she died she cursed the tribes who had deserted her, and turned them into trees.
Old Testament morality for men, New Testament for women. The black men keep the inner mysteries of the Boorah, or initiation ceremonies, from the knowledge of women, but so do Masons keep their secrets. As to the black women carrying most of the baggage on march, naturally so; the men want their hands free for hunting en route, or to be in readiness for enemies in a strange country.
It is said that this prophetic vision was the reason that so many of the first-born half-caste babies were killed, the old wirreenuns seeing in them the beginning of the end. At the end of two moons they make back towards the place where the Boorah had begun, and where preparations were now being made to receive them.
Now you can meet the Boorah spirit, Now will he harm you not. He will know his spirit is in you. For this is the sign, A front tooth gone. That is his sign, He will know you by it. Some of the wirreenuns buried these teeth by the Boorah fire, others carefully wrapped them up to keep as charms, or to send to other tribes, each according to the individual custom of his tribe.
This spirit, known variously as Gayandi, or Darramulun, went to the Boorah, but when he was to knock out the front tooth, he began to eat the boys' faces. He was too strong; he would not do to preside over, Boorahs. Byamee transformed him into a large piggiebillah-like animal, though instead of being covered with spines, thick hair grew over him; he has since been known as Nahgul.
Then the Munthdeeguns disappear down the track into the scrub. When they are out of sight the women are released, that they may get ready to travel to where the Durrawunga, or Little Boorah, will be held in about four days' time, at about ten miles distance.
It is told to me, that at some initiatory rites the oldest medicine man, or Wirreenun, present addresses a prayer to Byamee, asking him to give them long life, as they have kept his law. The tribesmen do not profess to pray, or to have prayed, to Byamee on any occasions except at funerals, and at the conclusion of the Boorah.
At his second Boorah a man is allowed to see the carvings on the trees and to hear the legends of them. Also to hear the Boorah song of Byamee, which Byamee himself sang; and to hear the prayer of the oldest wirreenun to Byamee, asking him to let the blacks live long, for they have been faithful to his charge as shown by the observance of the Boorah ceremony.
At each Boorah a stone was given to a man, and when he had the five he could marry. After each Boorah all the figures and embankments are destroyed.
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